Cinema Dispatch: Digger

Digger and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Boy howdy, is this a contentious one! I certainly wasn’t expecting the film to be so polarizing given the talent behind it, but this seems to have hit a lot of people the wrong way. I guess I should have seen it coming given how silly it was for the initial trailer to be about Tom Cruise’s career that also just so happens to end with a teaser for the movie, but I guess if you’re gonna go for the Oscar, you might as well go as big as possible. I’m certainly still looking forward to it, perhaps even more so now that it’s become such a huge miss with a lot of people! Will I be one of those who will find greatness in Tom Cruise’s latest attempt to prove he can do more than jump out of planes, or is this an absolute train wreck that can only happen at the highest levels of Hollywood talent and creative hubris? Let’s find out!!

As long as the world needs oil, there will be men like Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise); an oil baron with the world at his fingertips and the US President on speed dial. Now typically, a man with that kind of power is rarely put in difficult positions, but that all changes when the one thing he can’t control, Mother Nature, gives him and the rest of humanity a kick to the gonads as one of Digger’s extraction sites in Greenland explodes and releases an ice shelf that’s on a one-way path to Europe. Not exactly the best PR for an oil company, but Digger is not about to be buried in controversy when he still calls the shots and keeps the modern world spinning. Of course, it’s not going to be an easy game of 4-D chess as everyone, from his head of environmental safety (Riz Ahmed), to his sister with a Green Energy company (Sandra Hüller), and even the very cranky President of the United States (John Goodman) is breathing down his neck to either fix the problem or make it someone else’s. With the facts of the situation so overwhelmingly against him, can Digger steer the narrative away from his company’s failings and make himself the hero of this crisis? Just how much damage can be expected from this icey torpedo of death, and is there any hope of stopping this disaster before it’s too late? Is this something that can be fixed with a few folksy stories about his grand-dad, because Digger certainly has a lot of those!

“Back in my day, a global catastrophe was just another word for opportunity! Now someone get my submarine before we’re all inhaling salt water and fish urine!”
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Cinema Dispatch: The Revenant

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The Revenant and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Fox

Directed by  Alejandro González Iñárritu

Huh.  When you think about it, Iñárritu is kind of doing the same thing here that he did with Birdman.  Take an actor who’s known for something specific, and really dig into that a subtext of the movie.  For Birdman, it was about Michael Keaton trying to stay relevant as a genuine artist yet really only being known for his (in a certain perspective) more shallow performances.  Here, it’s almost like a metaphor for Leonardo DiCaprio’s continued struggle to win that fucking Oscar, taking on challenging role after challenging role yet never getting quite what he deserves.  That really does fit into this story about braving the elements in a quest for revenge that we can all pretty much assume doesn’t give him the satisfaction and validation that his character is so desperately seeking.  Still, does the movie itself manage to be entertaining in the same way Birdman was while still giving us some really interesting nuances to the story?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his struggles to get back to civilization after being left for dead by John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who also killed his son Hawk Glass (Forrest Goodluck).  During a hunting expedition led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) the party was raided by a contingent of Native American Warriors and only a couple of them (including Hugh, John, Hawk, and Andrew) make it out alive.  Because Hugh is the guy with the tragic backstory involving his Native American wife, he’s easily the best tracker in the group and so knows how to avoid the tribe while also finding the safest route through the mountains, though John doesn’t really trust him or his son due to almost getting scalped by Native Americans a while ago.  Unfortunately for the party, Hugh gets the shit kicked out of him by a Grizzly Bear and is nearly dead after the encounter.  The party tries to carry him along, but the strain becomes too great and he’s left with a couple men (Hawk, John, and one other dude Bridger played by Will Poulter) so that he can… die peacefully?  I don’t know, but things don’t go as planned as the already suspicious John decides to kill off Hugh and ends up killing Hawk in the process… yet doesn’t feel the need to finish off Hugh I guess.  Anyway, John convinces Bridger to leave and so Hugh is left for dead.  That ain’t about to stop Leonardo DiCaprio though, as he crawls out of his shallow grave, and makes his way back to home base to kick Tom Hardy square in the teeth!  Can he survive the stark and desolate countryside long enough to get his revenge!?  More importantly, can Leo finally win his god damn Oscar!?

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“Hey man, I heard Sean Penn left his Best Actor award down there.”     “IT’S MIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!!!”

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