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Friday, January 8, 2016
Movie Reviews: The Revenant, The Forest, Carol, Hitchcock/Truffaut
Posted By Scott Renshaw on January 8, 2016, 8:10 AM
The first new releases of 2016 include two movies in the 2015 awards conversation, a psychological thriller, and a documentary about two legendary film directors.
Leonardo DiCaprio's performance is the focal point of the gritty period drama The Revenant (pictured), but much of its power is sabotaged by its director's look-at-me aesthetic. Hitchcock/Truffaut takes a wide-ranging approach to the conversations that became a seminal book about movie-making, but enough individual moments click to make up for the lack of focus.
Andrew Wright finds the setting of the thriller The Forest providing for some surprisingly effective atmosphere in the middle of all the jump scares.
In this week's feature review, Todd Haynes' masterful direction captures two women falling in love circa 1952 in Carol.
Also opening this week, but not reviewed: artist Matthew Barney's 6-hour operatic tour through Egyptian cosmology in River of Fundament; and the story of a pro wrestler who becomes both a minister and a crime-fighting vigilante in The Masked Saint.
Leonardo DiCaprio's performance is the focal point of the gritty period drama The Revenant (pictured), but much of its power is sabotaged by its director's look-at-me aesthetic. Hitchcock/Truffaut takes a wide-ranging approach to the conversations that became a seminal book about movie-making, but enough individual moments click to make up for the lack of focus.
Andrew Wright finds the setting of the thriller The Forest providing for some surprisingly effective atmosphere in the middle of all the jump scares.
In this week's feature review, Todd Haynes' masterful direction captures two women falling in love circa 1952 in Carol.
Also opening this week, but not reviewed: artist Matthew Barney's 6-hour operatic tour through Egyptian cosmology in River of Fundament; and the story of a pro wrestler who becomes both a minister and a crime-fighting vigilante in The Masked Saint.
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