More than a decade before earning back-to-back Best Director Oscars (Birdman, The Revenant), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed a series of unrelated hyperlink films. The idea behind hyperlink movies is that you have a movie that tells completely different stories in completely different settings but connected or influenced in ways unknown to the characters (and for periods of time the audience as well). These films started gaining popularity with the success of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic in the year 2000. When done correctly, hyperlink films can be incredibly memorable. Traffic won four Academy Awards and was a favorite for Best Picture in 2000. Four years later, Crash maxed out on the hyperlinked film method, earning six Oscar nominations and taking home three awards, including Best Picture. Inarritu’s first hyperlink (and first feature-length) film, Amores Perros, wasn’t really marketed and was missed by many. While receiving high marks from critics, it earned less than $5 million at the box office and hasn’t been a movie that many people have gone back and seen, despite the success of his two Oscar-winning movies. I did actually watch Amores Perros after it was recommended by a friend and did not love it. Inarritu’s second endeavor, 21 Grams, was loaded with Hollywood A-listers (Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Melissa Leo, Benicio Del Toro). It also resonated with critics (80%) and audiences (86%) but earned just $16 million domestically. I also saw 21 Grams and found it to be incredibly boring. His third movie, 2007’s Babel, is easily his best hyperlink movie and, in my opinion, his second-best overall (behind The Revenant, which just happens to be my favorite movie of all time). While just 69% of critics gave it a favorable rating (77% audience), it earned seven Academy Award nominations (winning one), including Best Picture and Best Director. For those who see this movie and don’t like it because of its pace or its length (or for whatever other reason), I won’t try to talk you out of it. It’s certainly not for everyone. And while the overall story and the arching angle wasn’t the most complex or even the most interesting, the acting was absolutely top-notch, with some of the biggest Hollywood heavyweights bringing their A-game while unknown actors taking center stage and making a name for themselves.
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Category Archives: Alejandro González Iñárritu
The Revenant (2015)
Why not save the best for last? It doesn’t always work out that way, but The Revenant was the final movie released in 2015. In fact, except for in a few select theaters in a few select cities, you couldn’t see the film until January 7th. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely it was. It seems like we’ve seen trailers for months building this movie up. Each time I saw a preview, I couldn’t help but get excited. I believe that this might have been my most anticipated movie since Shutter Island, and with that movie, I had reason to be wary because it was a 2010 movie released in February. You usually don’t get the best films of the year released that early in the year. While Shutter Island exceeded expectations, The Revenant was all that and more. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby) has been burned by the Academy many times before. While The Revenant is his fifth Academy Award nomination for acting, he should have at least three or four more. None of those past omissions matter now, as DiCaprio is the front runner to win Best Actor this year. I wouldn’t quite qualify him as a lock to win, but it is only a two-actor race, and his performance was more impressive than the fabulous performance given by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
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Birdman (2014)
For all the hype surrounding Alejandro González Iñárritu’s (Babel, Biutiful) Birdman, I was highly unimpressed. Yes, it was an above-average movie. Yes, the directing was good. Yes, the acting was good. But I never felt anything remarkable about this movie, its directing, or its acting. According to www.indiewire.com, Academy Award nominations are certainties for the film and for Iñárritu, Michael Keaton (as Lead Actor), Edward Nort-on (as Supporting Actor), Emma Watson (as Supporting Actress), and a host of others. I know this has been a terrible year for movies thus far, but there are still two months left. I still have incredibly high hopes for films like Interstellar, Nightcrawler, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, American Sniper, Wild, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Foxcatcher, and Unbroken. I am hoping more than a few of these movies can break through and be the movies of 2014 that you have to see. So far, I’ve been told that Birdman, Gone Girl, and Boyhood were the movies that would be these movies that you HAD to see. So far, those who have said this have been 0 for 3. Each of these movies has been above average (B- to B range), but I will not have lasting memories of any of them.
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