[jyl]

I liked the movie, didn't love it. I'm not thinking it should win an Oscar or that DiCaprio should. The bear, though, should win some award.

Edit: I guess I should say "why". The plot was really predictable. You know he survives alone in the wilderness, so you know the boy is dying as soon as his dad can't protect him. The bad guy is identified as bad from the first scene where he opens his mouth. As soon as you learn about the missing daughter, you know she is going to cross paths with Glass. And so on. Nothing that happens is any surprise - at best, there is some mild curiosity, hmm it is about time for him to fall in a river or run into hostile Indians, wonder which it will be today?. In fact, after a while you've seen Glass wake up, crawl out from his bear blanket, and promptly suffer some abuse or encounter some danger, so often, that it gets to be the frontier version of "wake up and go to work", except that he doesn't get any coffee first. Absent anything unexpected happening, you have to get your pleasures from how beautifully or realistically or intensely filmed the predictable event is when it shows up as expected. And it is all that: the cinematography is impressive, all the wound makeup is cool, and DiCaprio has a good "I'm suffering" expression that he gets to use a awful lot. So, it was a good movie. But hardly a great one.

By the way, I was bothered by one detail. In an otherwise meticulous movie. How come everyone's hair is filthy, lank, greasy - and the boy's hair always looks like its just been blow dried?

If you want to go see one of the Oscar Best Picture nominees, I would recommend "Spotlight".