SUBLIME EPIC PITS MAN AGAINST NATURE
At two-and-ahalf hours plus, The Revenant (15) is overlong, but Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic Western is so gorgeous-looking it never outstays its welcome.
Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a fur trapper who, after becoming a bear’s necessity, is left for dead. And so, tattered and torn, he begins a long, agonising journey back to civilisation.
And that’s it. But what counts about the movie is the savagely impressionistic images – add Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score and you have something approaching visionary.
There’s even less by way of plot in Trumbo (15) This true story tells of how screenwriter Dalton Roman Holiday Trumbo was blacklisted for being a communist. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston has fun with Trumbo, but the movie gives him nowhere dramatic to go.
Deadpool (15) stars Ryan Reynolds, but not even his engaging presence invigorates it. Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a special forces vet dying of cancer. But hey, says Ajax (Game Of Thrones’ Ed Skrein), it needn’t be terminal. Just take some of this serum… Alas, though Wade is cured, and blessed with superpowers, the friend who tells him he now looks like Freddy Krueger after he’s mated with ‘a map of Utah’ isn’t wrong. But ‘mated’ is not the word used and the unquotable language is entirely typical of this swear-box of a movie. Father’s Day oldie of the week is Doomwatch (PG) the featurelength outing of the Beeb’s Seventies eco-thriller series. It’s a trashy treat.