United States of Ireland

The Oscars are no strangers to romantic films, and the last few years have been no exception. Sometimes they are biographical (The Theory of Everything), sometimes they are about the struggles on the way to love (Silver Linings Playbook), and sometimes they are a bit kooky (Her). So what can we make of this year's tale of love? This is Brooklyn.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is a young Irish girl who leaves for America lead a better life. With arrangements made by Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), an Irish priest, Eilis moves to Brooklyn, New York, to join the Irish community there. She is accepted into the home of Mrs. Keogh (Julie Walters) who also hosts several other young Irish girls. She begins to work in a shop, she meets a nice Italian boy called Tony (Emory Cohen), and her new life in Brooklyn begins to settle down rather nicely. But a quick trip back to Ireland could prove to upset that.

Emory Cohen and Saoirse Ronan as Tony and Eilis

Brooklyn is a film built on small yet significant roles; in a story about community, fellowship, and relationships, the supporting cast are just as important, if not more so, than the lead actress. Not to take anything away from Ronan, who we will come to in a moment, from Walters' deliciously entertaining Mrs. Keogh to Cohen's charming Tony to Domhnall Gleeson's delightfully handsome Jim Farrell, the smaller characters are what give Brooklyn its life and its energy. But its heart and soul do still come from its leading lady. Ronan plays Eilis calmly with grace. From the moment the film starts rolling, her soft manner draws the viewer in, her friendly, warm nature invites them along for the journey across the sea. Eilis has a constantly determined will that's always held back by a society that wants to keep her grounded, but Ronan's versatile charm keeps the audience rooting for her; we share in her confusion, we feel her pain, we fall in love alongside her.

Emory Cohen and Saoirse Ronan as Tony and Eilis

There is a rare quality to Brooklyn that few films accomplish. It is hopelessly romantic but also comments on a far bigger picture. Between the lines of love it tells the story of immigration, of old lands and new, of starting afresh. Nick Hornby's screenplay is structured around the struggles faced by Eilis in love and finding her home but never fails to keep sight of both of those key elements, intertwining the two with precision and care, turning the narrative of love into a metaphor for the difficulties of finding which side of the ocean her heart lies. Director John Crowley takes this story and turns it into a gloriously moving tale assisted by beautiful production design by François Séguin.

Brooklyn is an unrepentantly romantic piece of cinema and a warm hearted accomplishment of the screen. Touching, funny, and full of heart. A true success.

Revenge is Best Served Cold

This years Oscars seem to be a year of survival films. Both Mad Max and The Martian had the theme of survival at their core but neither even come close to today's film. Today's film takes the survival theme and stretches it to its very limits. This is The Revenant.

Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) live on a settlement with a fur-trappers. When their hunting party is attacked by a local tribe of native Arikara Indians, they have to flee to try and make it to a safe outpost. Led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) and accompanied by John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), the group venture out towards safety but on route, Glass gets separated from the others and mauled by a bear. Despite the freezing winter, the others rescue him and carry him between them on a stretcher. However, after being slowed down by the burden, Glass is eventually left for dead and buried alive when Fitzgerald tricks Bridger into thinking they are about to come under attack, forcing them to leave Glass behind. But Glass fights to survive and he has one sole intent - to get revenge on Fitzgerald.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass

The Revenant is, very simply put, Leonardo DiCaprio's film. Not only is the film almost entirely focused on Glass' fight to survive, giving him a huge percentage of the screen time, but it is also a testament to DiCaprio's acting ability. Not that this was ever in doubt, but after several roles that involved a high amount of physicality and volume (see The Wolf of Wall Street), his performance as Glass pushes him to his limits. Glass, for a good majority of the film, can hardly move or speak, and yet DiCaprio brings such life to an almost lifeless character. Tied down to the stretcher, completely incapacitated, his constrained facial expressions and muffled grunts tell a more detailed and developed narrative than whole films managed in 2015 (see Pixels). Despite this, DiCaprio is surrounded by a stellar supporting cast, Tom Hardy in particular. There is something nasty about Hardy's Fitzgerald but, at the same time, terribly endearing. He is intelligent but brutal, dishonest but authoritative. He has superb survival instincts but is only out for himself. Hardy encapsulates this and creates one of the best antagonists of the year.

Tom Hardy as John Fitzgerald

The Revenant is an epic adventure from start to finish. It opens with an absolutely astonishing set piece, the camera tracking through the carnage of battle, following one hunter until their death, then another then another. We adopt the camera's viewpoint and stumble through the fighting in confusion but also never looking away; we even plunge underwater with Will Poulter's Bridger as someone attempts to drown him. Alejandro González Iñárritu uses similar techniques to his Best Picture winning Birdman last year, albeit in shorter supply, to drag us into the gritty realm of survival. But is it any surprise with someone as talented as Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity, Children of Men, The Tree of Life) behind the camera that The Revenant excels in its visual story telling. Bookended by two incredibly shot scenes of fighting, The Revenant does almost as much in how it portrays its narrative as what it is portraying. The long shots of the wilderness tell us its great expanse, the long takes tell us the relentlessness of the struggles faced.

Without a doubt the most gorgeous film of the year, but perhaps also the grittiest; the true story it is based on is not even as brutal as the film's depiction of the events, but Iñárritu and Lubezki really capitalise on their visual art form and make something truly memorable.