Movie Review: 'The Revenant' Is Savage And Stunning

The Revenant, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up to last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman, is many things: a brutal revenge tale, a quest for justice, an allegorical frontier survival story. As grim and visceral and punishing to watch as the film is, another team up between Inarritu and celebrated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, it’s a stunning sight to behold. Full of dedicated, ho-holds-barred performances, especially from Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, The Revenant is a grueling, demanding, frontier Apocalypse Now.

This 'The Dead Lands' Is Full Of Screaming Warriors, Beheadings, And Spurting Neck Wounds

If you’re down for a historical actioner where old timey tribal dudes hack each other to shit with old timey weapons, The Dead Lands may be just the movie you’re looking for. Hailing from New Zealand and directed by Tao Fraser, this looks brutal, bloody, and full of crazy ass action. You’ve got revenge and screaming warriors and beheadings and spurting neck wounds. What more do you want?

DVD Review: 'Spartacus: Gods of the Arena'

It feels strange to write a review of “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” right now, just a short few days after the untimely passing of actor Andy Whitfield, who played the titular gladiator in “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”, the series that preceded “Gods of the Arena”. Despite the absence of Spartacus, and Whitfield, in “Gods of the Arena”, he looms in the background, largely because if not for Whitfield’s well-publicized battle with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, the six-episode mini-series likely wouldn’t have happened. When Whitfield was originally diagnosed he stepped down from the show, a huge hit for the Starz network. While producers of the show frantically searched for a new leading man, eventually selecting Liam McIntyre, the idea for “Gods of the Arena” first came about. It will be curious how the series carries on without Whitfield. The more I watched “Blood and Sand”, the more he carried the bulk of the workload, and he will be missed.