Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
DiCaprio was bore but Depp was fab
Apologies in advance to the Advertiser’s resident movie expert and award-winning reporter Ian Bunting – but as a movie fan, I always look back over the previous 12 months and think about what were the best and worst films I’d seen at the cinema in 2016.
This year it was an easy choice for me, as I enjoyed one of the best movies I have seen in a long time.
But I also had to endure one of the most over- hyped films, which incredibly enough, won an Oscar for its star Leo diCaprio. Some people have no taste!
I will never forget being nudged awake at the end of ‘The Revenant’ and thinking to myself..is it still 2016?
And then thinking, if only that angry bear had taken care of business it would have ended this monument to endurance in a cinema seat two hours earlier.
If you’ve seen the movie, you will know that wee Leo only utters about 20 words. The rest of the time he grunts and groans in an effort that would cure insomnia. And indeed, I am sure it was the first time I had sat in a theatre with surround sound snoring!
At the other end of the Rolink register was Black Mass, which was superb. Its star Johnny Depp was amazing as a real bad guy - a gangster with nothing but malice and darkness in a guise that made no attempt at glamour.
It was gritty and on more than one occasion made me wince at the brutal violence. The physical appearance of Depp as Whitey Bulger was incredible. In fact he was almost unrecognisable from his usual roles, as he played the villain with aplomb in a real understated style that gripped the audience.
On leaving the cinema, I could only think about what Bulger would have done to Leo if he had been forced to endure The Revenant.... No doubt it wouldn’t have been pleasant...but in my opinion at least, entirely justified!