The Revenant

The Revenant directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and Domhall Gleeson.

Easily better than Inarritu's previous movie Birdman and one of the most visually stunning movies I've seen in a long time.  This movie needs to be seen at least once because there's no other movie out there that's even like this one.  This movie is one of kind as it rests on a revenge plot: man versus man.  But this movie also has the man versus nature element of it that truly sets it apart from other movies of this genre.  Character is here but not much depth as the man versus nature aspect of the story dominates the entire movie but not in a bad way by any stretch of those words.  This is one of the best man versus nature movies I've ever seen.   

The reality on display is simply amazing as the production and costume design fully step up to their game to compliment the reality trying to be conveyed.  

This movie completely transported me to the pioneer era it was representing as it did a no holds bar visualization of that time period.  Much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the medium is the message here as the visuals convey the entire story.  What visuals are on display.  The landscape becomes a solid character in this movie, much like the monolith was a character in 2001.  It's brutality on full display in every frame but yet the harshness of that brutality is weighed against the beauty of the wilderness.  Nature isn't evil as it is fighting against man as much as man is fighting against it.

Yes, the bear attack scene was intense in it's viciousness and sudden-ness so much so that when it was over I watched it again and was still amazed at it a second time around.  The only other scene that compares to this is when the main character has to survive a blizzard and gets into his dead horse for warmth.  Both of these scenes in their gory, bloody detail show not only a will to survive but further establishes the landscape as a character, showing the viewer that the landscape is more than woods and snow.  There is more out there than just what a person can see and that something isn't evil but is just part of life and how a person survives is up them.