Just finished it. Will rewatch in theaters but some thoughts.
This is Inarritu's best movie as far as I've seen from him.
Because I haven't seen Amores Perros and I haven't seen Biutiful and it's kinda funny because I'm the type of guy who'd probably actually enjoy those movies, but his "big league" stuff (21 Grams, Babel, Birdman) has been so utterly pretentious, and worse than that, so utterly average, that I never felt the intention of exploring the director. Which is where I'll stop shytting on Inarritu for as far this little review goes, because as said, this is the best movie I've seen by him and it's really good*.
On a technical level it's largely unfukkwithable. We all know Lubezki is the single greatest cinematographer working in the film industry today, and this is not just the most demanding challenge for him since Children Of Men, the challenge is far greater. And yet he captures the madness and insanity as effortlessly as we've grown accustomed to from the man. He really has no equal right now, and in general, between this, Mad Max, Victoria and Son Of Saul, bars have been raised this year to unfathomable levels as far as camera work goes. Crazy strong year in that aspect. The sound effects and music are equally great, and again, this movie can be put next to those three films I mentioned as the most technically impressive films of the year (and I'll just give Gaspar Noé's Love a honorable mention while I'm at it).
But...
I called it really good*, and that asterisk is there for a reason.
* While a solid 80% of the movie is pure
on every level imaginable, there's quite a big lull in the middle (I'd say 20-30 minutes), and I tried to excuse it because the rest of the movie is so strong, but I can't. It bothered me. They could've trimmed it down, or at least tried to be a bit more inventive than having Leo crawl over the ground for five minutes, have a 30 second abstract dream sequence, watch him crawl over the ground again, drop in another 30 second abstract dream sequence and repeat that for half an hour. So it's not perfect, unfortunately.
Also, I hate to break it to the Leo fans, but I don't see what makes his performance here so great. It's physically demanding, sure. Incredibly demanding even, and props for that. But besides that, that's it. He drools and intensifies strongly, he mostly speaks in a raspy native tongue, and I applaud the effort. But the performance to end all performances, it really is not. In that sense I was more impressed with Tom Hardy, who didn't necessarily outdo himself either but his performance is dirtier and filthier than ever and has the same kind of visceral intensity as Leo has, albeit not as physical. And of course there's Domhnall Gleeson because which fukking movie doesn't that guy star in this year? Random note, I'm probably the only person in the world who will comment on this but I couldn't get over how much the chief looked like a Native American Takeshi Kitano. I looked the guy's name for that reason alone and his name is Duane Howard, which Google tells me is also the name of some nascar driver.
Anyways...
it was really good*, and it'll probably/definitely sneak into my top 10 of the year, but a bit more consistency (in particular, not having a boring, dragged out middle part) would've pushed this towards classic status. As it stands now however, I'd give it a strong 8/10.
