I saw an interview with Bear Grylls recently where the adventurer praised The Revenant’s realism, saying it accurately depicts a grim struggle for survival in an inhospitable landscape. He liked it so much that he went straight to a travel agent afterwards, booking a nice winter break for himself and the family in the frozen wilderness of Canada where The Revenant was shot.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the movie, including ridiculous ones like a histrionic piece in The Guardian calling The Revenant “pain porn” and drawing a comparison to ISIS. All news is good news for “Team Revenant” in the run-up to the Oscars, and all those column inches about bear rape and liver eating will surely keep it fresh in everyone’s minds right up to the ceremony.

I don’t really understand why some people are getting so hot under the collar about the film. While the content is gruesome and often brutal, the stylistic choices made by Alejandro Iñárritu keeps the action at a removed distance, even when the camera is shoved up someone’s nose. We’re never given the opportunity to get to know the characters, so we just sit there, observing Hugh Glass’ ordeal with cool detachment, waiting for him to get his revenge so we can all go home. Mel Gibson got the job done about an hour less in Payback, and it was a bit more fun.

DiCaprio and Co. keep talking about what an arduous location shoot it was, which leads me to my main beef with the movie: Iñárritu puts his cast and crew through hell for the sake of authenticity, but makes so many flashy choices that keep drawing our attention to the artifice of the piece. Here are five of them.

1. Long, Long, Long, Masturbatory Takes

Iñárritu and Lubezki are up to their Birdman tricks again, filming long sequences of The Revenant in elaborate takes. The film’s opening set piece is immense, a stupendous tracking shot through the mayhem of an Indian raid on Leo’s fur trapper camp. It’s a little too perfect, as the camera glides clinically through the bloodbath, taking the time to pan and tilt at just the right moment to capture people getting their heads caved in.

Some call this immersive; I call it showboating. It’s like watching a demo reel for a hyper-realistic first-person shooter, and the technique calls attention to the whereabouts of the camera rather than making it disappear. The trouble with long takes is that it goes against the usual visual rhythm we expect in a film, so when the cut doesn’t come, it makes us more conscious of the director’s decision not to cut. Because of this, I’m spending more time admiring the craft than getting involved in the action.

By comparison, look at George Miller’s virtually invisible direction in Mad Max: Fury Road. There are no such flourishes from him. Miller’s only interested in orchestrating his team in service of the story, and that is far more immersive. Iñárritu’s choice of long takes serves his ego rather than the story.

2. Stuff-on-Lens Syndrome

Another thing some people find “immersive” that I find a bit too video game-like is stuff getting splattered all over the lens. It worked in Saving Private Ryan because it felt like some ultra-intrepid film crew was documenting the battle. It doesn’t make sense in The Revenant. Cameras didn’t exist back then, so what is getting spattered with blood, water and misted up by Leo’s breath? The viewer’s eyeballs? It just brings attention to the fourth wall, and once you do that, it makes the viewer conscious of that transparent barrier between them and the action.

3. Ridiculous Dream Sequences

You know when someone at work starts telling you about a dream they had last night, and you take it as an opportunity to think about something else? Dream sequences in movies almost always have that effect on me. Because they’re dreams, the director can throw any old nonsense in there, or use it to fill in some back story that decent writing could have covered in dialogue. We didn’t need a dream sequence in Jaws to show Quint’s harrowing experience on the USS Indianapolis.

The Revenant gives us some very repetitive dream sequences to show us what happened to Leo’s dead wife. It’s pretty hackneyed, and it gets comical when she starts floating around above him like a possessed Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters.

4. Tom Hardy’s Accent

Hardy’s talent as an actor is undeniable, but he’s a very odd duck. In interviews, he looks like he’d rather be wringing the life out of the interviewer with his bare hands than answering their banal questions. And Hardy goes through accents like Inspector Clouseau goes through costumes and silly wigs. The Peter Sellers comparison is apt because one has to wonder—does Tom Hardy need to hide behind these crazy voices the same way Sellers needed to with his characters?

Hardy picked up a Supporting Actor nomination for this year’s Oscars, and he certainly immerses himself in the role of Leo’s nemesis John Fitzgerald. As a Brit, he could have chosen any kind of American accent. Instead, he chose the most outlandish, impenetrable accent he could muster, basing it on Tom Berenger in Platoon. It struck me as such an ostentatious acting choice that every time he spoke it took me out of the movie—like Iñárritu’s directorial choices, the accent feels too much like self-indulgence.

5. “What the hell are you looking at?”

Having spent a couple of hours getting splashed, splattered and breathed on, the fourth wall is finally shattered when Leo peers right down the lens at us in The Revenant’s final frames.

It’s reminiscent of 12 Years a Slave‘s most sanctimonious moment when Solomon Northrup casts a challenging gaze into the camera. That movie spends about an hour showing us that slavery is a bad thing, then Brad Pitt shows up to tell Michael Fassbender that slavery is a bad thing. Then Northrup looks straight out of the movie at us, as if to say, “Shame on you, don’t you know slavery is a bad thing?” Well, no shit, it’s only been abolished for a hundred and fifty years or so.

At the end of The Revenant, Leo fixes us with a similar meaningful gaze, although his message seems to be more universal.”Mankind…bunch of assholes, huh?”

A new trailer has surfaced for The Revenant, the highly-anticipated film from Alejandro G. Iñarritu (Birdman) which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domnhall Gleeson, and Will Poulter. We already got a glimpse of the beautiful cinematography from the masterful Emmanuel Lubezki in the first trailer, and there’s some gorgeous shots in this one too, but now we’re starting to see some of the actual plot.

The story is inspired by true events of one man’s grand adventure for survival, as legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is abandoned by his own crew after getting mauled by a bear. The Revenant showcases his survival of life-threatening injuries in harsh winter conditions as well as his pursuit for redemption.

The Revenant opens in limited theaters on December 25, 2015—just in time for Oscars contention—then goes wide on January 8, 2016.

Less than a year removed from his Best Director and Best Picture Academy Award wins for Birdman, director Alejandro G. Iñarritu has refueled his addicition to risky filmmaking through another ambitious collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. The Revenant, shot over the course of a few months in the largely untouched wilderness surrounding Calgary, was filmed entirely using natural lighting at the expense of the production’s flexibility. This expectedly facilitates some stunning long take camerawork from Lubezki, though much of the trailer more closely resembled the cinematographer’s chaotic work on Children of Men and not his more recent contributions to Birdman.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a trapper in the 1820s who is mauled by a bear, DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass survives his injuries, the harsh winter, and a hostile environment in order to take revenge against his traitorous partner (Tom Hardy). Domnhall Gleeson and Will Poulter star as well. The Revenant is not expected to début until December 25th (in limited release), so you will have to wait nearly half a year for the context of this exhiliarting and epic footage.

Watch the new trailer for The Revenant below:

It’s starting to feel like Christmas already as the nominations for our favorite awards show, the Film Independent Spirit Awards, were announced moments ago. Leading the pack with a total of six nominations was Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) grabbing nods for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Editing, and three acting categories. Not far behind it was Richard Linklater‘s masterful Boyhood which received a total of five nominations in major categories. Also landing five nominations were Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, and Ava DuVernay’s Selma.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the absence of Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyer’s Club follow-up Wild, since a lot of people have been talking about Reese Witherspoon’s performance in it. However, the biggest snub this year belongs to The Overnighters for not getting a nod for Best Documentary, as this indie doc is getting some serious Oscar buzz. Also, I had to do a double take when seeing André Benjamin’s name under the Best Actor category, which seems a little out of left-field but also edged out Ellar Coltrane for Boyhood and Oscar Isaac for A Most Violent Year.

Here at Way Too Indie, we were especially happy to see nominations for some smaller films such as A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (which picked up 3 noms and landed on our Must See Indie list), The One I Love, and It Felt Like Love. The 2015 Independent Spirit Awards will broadcast live (new this year) on IFC at 2:00/5:00pm PT/ET on Saturday, February 21, 2015.

Watch For: Our Spirit Award predictions coming soon.

2015 Independent Spirit Award Nominations:

Birdman
Boyhood
Love is Strange
Selma
Whiplash

Damien Chazelle – Whiplash
Ava DuVernay – Selma
Alejandro G. Iñárritu – Birdman
Richard Linklater – Boyhood
David Zellner – Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski – Big Eyes
J.C. Chandor – A Most Violent Year
Dan Gilroy – Nightcrawler
Jim Jarmusch – Only Lovers Left Alive
Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias – Love is Strange

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Dear White People
Nightcrawler
Obvious Child
She’s Lost Control

Desiree Akhavan – Appropriate Behavior
Sara Colangelo – Little Accidents
Justin Lader – The One I Love
Anja Marquardt – She’s Lost Control
Justin Simien – Dear White People

André Benjamin – Jimi: All Is By My Side
Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler
Michael Keaton – Birdman
John Lithgow – Love is Strange
David Oyelowo – Selma

Marion Cotillard – The Immigrant
Rinko Kikuchi – Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
Julianne Moore – Still Alice
Jenny Slate – Obvious Child
Tilda Swinton – Only Lovers Left Alive

Riz Ahmed – Nightcrawler
Ethan Hawke – Boyhood
Alfred Molina – Love is Strange
Edward Norton – Birdman
J.K. Simmons – Whiplash

Patricia Arquette – Boyhood
Jessica Chastain – A Most Violent Year
Carmen Ejogo – Selma
Andrea Suarez Paz – Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Emma Stone – Birdman

Darius Khondji – The Immigrant
Emmanuel Lubezki – Birdman
Sean Porter – It Felt Like Love
Lyle Vincent – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Bradford Young – Selma

Sandra Adair – Boyhood
Tom Cross – Whiplash
John Gilroy – Nightcrawler
Ron Patane – A Most Violent Year
Adam Wingard – The Guest

Force Majeure (Sweden)
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Mommy (Cananda)
Norte, the End of History (Philippines)
Under the Skin (United Kingdom)

20,000 Days on Earth
CITIZENFOUR
Stray Dog
The Salt of the Earth
Virunga

Blue Ruin – Jeremy Saulnier
It Felt Like Love – Eliza Hittman
Land Ho! – Aaron Katz & Martha Stephens
Man From Reno – Dave Boyle
Test – Chris Mason Johnson

Foxcatcher

Inherent Vice
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Casting Director: Cassandra Kulukundis
Ensemble Cast: Josh Brolin, Martin Donovan, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Joaquin Phoenix, Eric Roberts, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short Serena Scott Thomas, Benicio Del Toro, Katherine Waterston, Michael Kenneth Williams, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon

Chad Burris
Elisabeth Holm
Chris Ohlson

Amanda Rose Wilder – Approaching the Elephant
Darius Clark Monroe – Evolution of a Criminal
Dan Krauss – The Kill Team
Sara Dosa – The Last Season

Ana Lily Amirpour – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Rania Attieh & Daniel Garcia – H.
Chris Eska – The Retrieval

Overflowing with vividly imagined set pieces, Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a frenetic, beautiful movie with a compelling story at its center. The movie opens on Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson levitating in his dressing room, in one of the movie’s several implementations of magical realism. “How did we end up here?” growls his internal monologue. “You were a movie star, remember?” Throughout Birdman the voice in Riggan’s head returns with self-aggrandizing statements that nag at Riggan’s outer self-awareness. He’s an actor who’s been humbled by his years out of the spotlight. Like Keaton in real life, Riggan was the star of a popular superhero film franchise, the titular “Birdman,” however, in the film Birdman Riggan is staging a Broadway play in which he’s writing, directing and starring, hoping to reclaim some long-lost glory.

Shot in gorgeous long-takes by director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (who’s dropped the “Gonzales” on this film) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, Gravity), Birdman uses clever staging and editing tricks to make 98% of the film look as if it’s one long steadicam shot. Actors dip and dive into and out of the camera’s way while it makes 360-degree turns around the room. New characters will step into a scene then walk to the next scene through the busy backstage Broadway hallways while the camera hangs just behind their heads. Riggan walks with Edward Norton’s Mike Shiner, and the all-drums score becomes momentarily diegetic as Riggan flips a quarter to a drummer on the street. The whole endeavor becomes chaotic but completely enchanting, rarely allowing for a moment of rest.

Birdman relies on the flexible performance from Michael Keaton. With his character’s life thrown into straitened circumstances, his underlying egotism won’t let him fully accept his situation. In moments of rage, Riggan utilizes telepathy to toss items across his dressing room, fueled by his damaged self-image. These abstractions serve to symbolically elevate many scenes, and contained within Lubezki’s no-cut shots they come as delightful surprises during the film. But even in these instances, Keaton keeps the performance grounded in reality. He embodies the film’s bipolar tendencies, smoothly turning from somber confessions to searing punch lines.

Throughout the movie, Birdman takes aim at the complexities of the human ego. Feelings of grandeur, and the innate resentment we feel when things don’t go our way, are picked apart, revealed by the intrinsic pettiness of those thoughts. The movie is also a satirically dark look at the strangeness of celebrity. Actors who confuse admiration with love, who struggle with personal fulfillment because they’re too preoccupied with their careers, and the many arms of the entertainment industry, including producers, critics, and audiences, that hoist these movie stars onto an imagined podium. The film’s more meta-commentary adds a layer on already funny jokes, and while some of what Birdman’s referencing might skew too niche for many, most audiences will get a laugh from Zach Galifianakis’ mispronunciation of Martin “Scorsees”.

While the stylistic touches could be mislabeled as “gimmickry,” the uniqueness of Birdman’s ambition and the spectacular heights it’s able to achieve as a result of its approach justifies Iñárritu’s bold experiment. The amalgam of these effects is exhilarating, both commendably heartfelt and genuinely hysterical. Birdman is easily the least despondent movie in Inarritu’s filmography. In finding a glimmer of optimism, the Mexican director has crafted a bizarrely stunning, wildly joyful film that both celebrates and eviscerates its own medium.