For me, the main question I wanted to know going in was, "Is this going to be better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".
Happy to report that, yes it's vastly superior in almost every area to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
But with that out of the way, does it compete/equal the originals, to which the answer for me was no.
But it had its moments and felt way more in line with "an Indiana Jones" movie than Crystal Skull and had it's share of flaws. I still think Hollywood should use younger actors or makeup/prosthetics instead of "de-aging CGI" as it continues to look horrible IMO, or at least use it the same way the used emerging CGI in the late 90's early 00's by keeping it in shadow/not the focus point.
The cast, both legacy and new are solid across the board, soundtrack and score work well, plot was a big fun dumb adventure that actually felt like following the breadcrumbs in a good way.
Not at all a bad film, but one that probably won't make my top 10 of the year, but unlike Crystal Skull this probably also won't make my worst 10 of the year either.
I don't even know where to start. Enemy was one of my most anticipated films for this year. It is based on José Saramago's book called "The Double" (in its original Portuguese title "O Homem Duplicado") and it was constantly delayed here in Portugal but now I understand why the wait. They wanted to release it at the 4th year anniversary of the death of José Saramago, winner of a Literature Noble Prize in 1998 and one of our the greatest Portuguese writers ever! It was a beautiful homage, afterall this country unfortunately did not praised him as much as he deserved during his life. He had his very own philosophies, he was a very peculiar and different man. He was against Catholic Church and in a country where most of people are catholics, he was not very well regarded and I think his writing was damaged before the eyes of a country that sometimes cannot see through differences. I look at the writer not at the man, everyone is free to think whatever they want but well, that's another story. Now back to the film!
Enemy is a very complex thriller, very nightmarish and dark with an absolutely engaging atmosphere that will twist your mind and oh, how do I like this kind of mind-f*cking films! As a film that is based on a José Saramago's book and I know that he is a very metaphoric writer, who liked to makes us pull things from our head, mixing reality with mere thoughts, I knew that I would have to pay very attention to all of the details and that's what I did.
I also loved the claustrophobic feeling in the air, it's almost like we are trapped into the film and the absolutely creepy and dreadful soundtrack helps to create that feeling.
There are some things left hovering the air but I have a pretty strong theory for this story. This is a film that requires more than one viewing and I believe that can become more special to us in each visualization. Is very difficult to talk about it without spoiling anything. I think it is a film which is best experienced and then discussed.
What can I say more about Jake Gyllenhaal that I haven't said before? He must be one of the most underrated actors ever and he is so amazing! I can't remember to had seen a single bad performance from him. Once again he shines and what can be better than have, not one but two Jake Gyllenhaals?
I don't see everyone enjoying this film, some might think it is too slow or too boring. Some will feel very bothered with the atmosphere and with what they are watching but for me worked even better than what I was expecting.
Denis Villeneuve amazed me with Prisoners, one of my favorites of last year and he amazes me again with another fantastic work directing Enemy.
3.75/5. I walked out of this one saying to my friends, "that was pretty good for a 10 hour film." It was a long film that wanted you to feel the length. At times, that made it feel appropriately epic, but at others that made it feel like it was alternatively being indulgent or spinning its wheels. The Revenant started strong and ended fairly strong, but had a lot of fat in the middle.
But if there's one thing it deserves credit for, it's the cinematography and production. There are so many beautiful images throughout the film, whether it be a swooping shot of a snow-covered vista, or the slow lurch of the camera as it follows Glass crawling across the ground, or the Saving Private Ryan-esque battle sequence near the beginning of the film. It was visually arresting from the word go, even if the story and pacing couldn't always keep up.
Oddly enough, the film I found myself thinking about while watching The Revenant was Mad Max: Fury Road. Both feature a fairly straightforward narrative intended to impart broad themes, but make their bones with their visual storytelling and sensibilities, bolstered by strong individual performances that vary from the depictions of quiet strength to bombast. To that end, both films eschew exposition and narrative complexity in a bid to allow the images and the performances to convey the story.
There are certainly parallels between DiCaprio in The Revenant and Hardy in Mad Max, both playing largely silent, wounded animals who are haunted by their pasts. And the key feature in each is the aesthetic choices made by the folks behind the films, where both Miller and Inarritu communicate their themes most forcefully in the visuals they craft rather than dialogue, despite notable moments in both films where the characters' lines hit the major ideas of the film in a less-than-subtle manner. There are obviously significant distinctions between the two films in areas like tone and pacing, and Inarritu and Miller have different goals and styles, but they go about accomplishing and employing them in a strikingly similar fashion.
That said, I wasn't particularly blown away by DiCaprio's performance here. It was good, there's no question, but I've more or less had my fill of DiCaprio playing these intense, perpetually perturbed men with something in their past gnawing on them. He knows how to play those notes well, but I'm just kind of inured to it at this point. By the same token, the film includes too many vignettes of Glass's survival, with many of them being too long as well. Many did little to advance the narrative or the character (the big exception being Glass and his Pawnee companion catching snowflakes in one of the film's most endearing moment), which is fine in small doses. Giving the audience a chance to just spend time with a character can work toward making them invested in his fate when the time for the narrative fireworks come. But a lot of those scenes in The Revenant felt like indulgence or even just fumfering around. They were a part of the film that cried out for a montage that never came.
Hardy, on the other hand, does a fantastic job at Fitzgerald, who sells the character's attitude and role in the story almost from the minute he's on the screen, and makes Fitzgerald's nigh-heartless, mercenary pragmatism and his open racism feel lived-in and true to the character from the getgo.
Inarrito spends a lot of time seizing on a fairly simple theme, represented with his wind and tree metaphor, and building up an elaborate, somewhat pretentious infrastructure around it. There's value in simplicity in story and theme at times, but it feels like he's trying to take something straightforward and telescope it out to unsupportable complexity and weight here, and the film suffers for it.
Overall it's a generally good, but rarely great movie, with some serious and stultifying missteps in its lengthy, middle act. It's consistently a feast for the eyes, and the visual storytelling is close to impeccable, but the ideas involved are fairly shallow and trumped up, and the performances can only do so much to make up for its flaws.
