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Samstag, 30. April 2016

Movie Recommendations - Edition: This year's Blockbusters (Part 3): The Revenant and Hateful Eight

I have kind of a hate-love-relationship with awards, because on one hand I find awards pointless and watching all the rich people makes me sick, but on the other hand I've already written my accetance speech. Nevertheless, the Oscars are for me a great input into which movies I should check out this year. So far, I think that last years blockbusters where better alltogether with outstanding movies like the incredible Birdman, the beautiful Boyhood and the emotional rollercoaster Wild and of course with the genius Interstellar. I yet have to write my review of American Sniper, which I've also watched.

From this years nominations I still have to watch a few more but so far I've watched Mad Men (which I'm not reviewing because I don't really know what to say about it except: really cool images but a pointless story), The Revenant and Hateful Eight.

The Revenant


Well, it's a Leonoardo diCaprio movie, so my expectations of it were really high because to this date I've never seen a movie of him which disappointed me. But also I heard some negative things about it from several friends. Let's just say, the Revenant was a well-made movie and there's really nothing wrong with it but it didn't completely blow my mind as I hoped.

The thing which I found a bit disappointing was that in the end the whole movie was just about this one major asshole and about revenge. As it stars Leo diCaprio I was expecting some message against exploitation of Native Americans or something similar. But the motive for the actions were mostly pretty mundane (revenge).



Neverheless there's nothing wrong with a good survival story. The Revenant impressed me most in the scenes which showed Leonardo DiCaprio on his own. Seriously, I could just watch him crawling though the forest, eating raw meat and doing drastic things to survive for three hours. In those moment it was like I don't even notice that time is passing, Of course, Leonardo diCaprio did a fantastic job and I admire what he went through for this movie (especially because in real life he's a vegetarian). But still I don't think that it was his best work. I think that some of his previous roles were more Oscar-worthy.



Of course director's Alejandro González Inárrito and cinemathographer's Emmanuel Lubezki (who are both brilliant and both also worked on last year's oscar winner Birdman) work was great as always. But then again, how hard is it to make landscapes look majestic. It's a lot harder to make mentally instable actors in New York look magestic, which they managed to do in Birdman.

The Hateful Eight


The Hateful Eight was a very well-made Quentin Tarantino movie. It is a very typical movie of the famous director. The setting follows Reservoir Dogs, the characters remind me of some characters from Inglorious Baterds and the humor is close to Pulp Fiction. The idea is as simple as it's old: Trap all your characters with all their secrets and emotions and problems into one room and see what happens. In The Hateful Eight the room is a hut and the thing which traps them is a blizzard.



The setting was beautiful and the characters interesting. It was funny and witty and suprising and you didn't really know who the good guys and who the bad guys are until the very end. Every Quentin Tarantino fan has to watch this movie. I think on a scale for the cult movie Pulp Fiction on the top end to the awful From Dusk Till Dawn at the bottom end, Hateful Eight is somewhere in the upper third, between Inglorious Basterds and Kill Bill.

Have you seen The Revenant or The Hateful Eight? What did you think of them?

1 Kommentar:

  1. I haven't seen either of these movies yet. They are both on my to-watch list though!

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