The Revenant

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu's follow-up to his Oscar winner Birdman is another astonishing piece of film-making, moving from the bear pit of Broadway to the untamed wilderness of 1820s America. An epic true story of revenge and redemption, it stars a shaggy Leonardo DiCaprio as frontiersman Hugh Glass, who's mauled by a grizzly bear - a scene breathtaking in its savagery - while scouting on a fur-trapping expedition along the Missouri River. Mutilated but alive, he's then left for dead by treacherous trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy, etching another performance of brooding menace), which spurs him on a gruelling 200-mile trek to take retribution. It's here that Emmanuel Lubezki's intimate, immersive cinematography, using only natural light, comes into its own. Glass's existential travails, whether beleaguered by the force of the weather, his mangled body, or pursuing Arikara Indians, are the audience's as much as his. Here's a movie where the elements ooze from every shot, and DiCaprio matches it by baring his wounds and his soul in an Oscar-winning performance of agonising honesty and intense emotion. This is majestic cinema and a technical tour-de-force, but DiCaprio ensures it's the heart of Glass that keeps it beating.