Note to movie pussies: The Revenant is not for you. Life put the screws to Hugh Glass, the real-life tracker and fur trapper played to the hilt and beyond by Leonardo DiCaprio. And director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, a groundbreaker from Amores Perros to Birdman, damn near tortures his cast and his audience in telling the story of Glass' revenge against the varmints, headed by John Fitzgerald (a wicked-nasty Tom Hardy), who done him wrong. Set in the untamed West of 1823, it's one brutal, badass epic. But hang on for its unforgiving 156 minutes and you get to experience the power of cinema unleashed. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki — a true artist of light and shadow — shot on locations in Canada and Argentina. The visionary result is so relentlessly raw you can see the breath of the freezing actors, some of whom referred to the filming as a living hell. 
 
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 Watching the movie, you feel their pain. In loosely adapting Michael Punke's 2002 novel, Iñárritu and co-writer Mark L. Smith spare nothing in immersing us in the savagery of Glass' narrative. Before we can even get our bearings, Glass and his expedition, led by Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), are attacked, arrow to the jugular, by Arikara Indians. Casualties are great, though Glass strives to protect his half-Pawnee son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). In a style reminiscent of Terrence Malick, Glass hallucinates about his dead wife. But the scenes feel more arty than artful. We're relieved when Glass heads into the forest and a scene that will surely blow you away. 
 
 I'm talking about the bear, a mama grizzly who lays into Glass like a demon possessed. Early on, The Drudge Report mistakenly implied that DiCaprio's character was raped by the bear. Everything but. Mama is just defending her cubs. But when she flips Glass over on his back, you can hear his bones crack. And then she comes back for more. When she claws at his face, Glass looks like something Freddy Krueger left for dead. The sequence is spectacular in every sense of the word. OK, the bear is a product of an expert visual-effects team. But not for a second will you doubt you're seeing the real thing. This is one for the time capsule. 
 
 And the wonders rarely cease. Though Glass resembles a hacked side of beef, Henry instructs Fitzgerald and young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) to stay by his side, if only to provide a proper burial. Fitzgerald's mercenary reaction can be summed up in two words: Fuck that. 
 
 No one does villainy laced with traces of humanity like Hardy. Pleased to bury Glass alive, Fitzgerald heads off to line his pockets. But Glass won't stay buried. He drags his carcass across mountains, rivers and rapids to exact retribution for the evil done to him. 
 
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 That's the movie. And a visceral punch in the gut it is. You could gripe about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance. But surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance. As does the haunting score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner. 
 
 And then there's DiCaprio. Hidden behind a grotty beard, his words mostly reduced to grunts, he nonetheless provides a portrait of a man in full. It's a virtuoso performance, thrilling in its brute force and silent eloquence. Nominated by the Academy for What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street, DiCaprio is favored to win this time. But that's not the point. His talent is. The Revenant shows DiCaprio stretching his acting muscles, testing himself, eager for challenge. That you do not want to miss. ||||| Leonardo DiCaprio has been the first to admit that he went to some extreme lengths while filming The Revenant—the wilderness epic that may finally earn the four-time nominated actor a deserved Oscar. 
 
 To play a 19th-century frontiersman seeking revenge on Tom Hardy’s trapper, for example, DiCaprio slept in animal carcasses; submerged himself in frozen rivers, consistantly risked hypothermia during the icy, outdoors shoot; and ate raw bison liver. One activity in which DiCaprio definitely did not partake, however, was a bear rape scene, as the Drudge Report claims on Tuesday in typically tasteful headline fashion: “DICAPRIO RAPED BY BEAR IN FOX MOVIE.” 
 
 We know DiCaprio is not raped by a bear in The Revenant because, dear readers, there is simply no such scene in the admittedly grisly Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed film. Granted, DiCaprio does face-off with a bear in a showdown so violent it might deter you from the grizzly exhibit the next time you visit the zoo. But the actor is not sexually assaulted by a bear once, let alone twice, as the right-wing news outlet alleges in its bonkers story. Pull up a chair and, to correctly express the outraged incredulousness implied by the report’s punctuation, a megaphone. 
 
 The new movie 'REVENANT' features a shocking scene of a wild bear raping Leo DiCaprio! The explicit moment from Oscar winning director Alejandro Inarritu has caused maximum controversy in early screenings. Some in the audience escaped to the exits when the Wolf of Wall Street met the Grizzly of Yellowstone. The story of rural survivalism and revenge reaches new violent levels for a mainstream film. The bear flips Leo over and thrusts and thrusts during the explicit mauling. "He is raped -- twice!" Not to be outdone, DiCaprio rips open a horse and sleeps naked in its carcass! 
 
 DiCaprio does indeed tango violently with a bear, with the grizzly flipping the actor over and attacking his back. As if the lack of inter-species molestation is enough to disprove Drudge's report, several co-workers also point out that the film suggests that the bear attacker is female. DiCaprio's character is attacked after he makes the mistake of trespassing on bear cub turf. (“Is there such a thing as an overly-protective single father bear?” a colleague rightly inquired.) 
 
 In an interview this past October, the DiCaprio discussed filming the attack scene, which involved cables and precise choreography. 
 
 “[Those scenes]—amongst many other sequences—were some of the more difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my entire career,” DiCaprio told Yahoo!. “But the end result is going to be one of the most immersive experiences audiences will ever have with what it would be like to come face-to-face with an animal of that magnitude that is incredibly primal.” 
 
 The ridiculous report seems to have stemmed from veteran Hollywood journalist Roger Friedman, who reviewed the film on his blog Showbiz411 on November 29, and has a very different recollection of the bear attack scene than his peers. 
 
 “The bear flips [DiCaprio’s character] over on his belly and molests him– dry humps him actually– as he nearly devours him,” Friedman writes, adding that he did not entirely see the sequence as a negative. In fact, he is impressed by the technicality involved. “How Innaritu and DiCaprio did this is a movie mystery because it is as real feeling as Bruce the shark in Jaws 40 years ago. It’s as real looking as it could be, and maybe the most frightening moment I’ve seen in a film in eons.” 
 
 Although Drudge’s bear-rape alarm may not be factual, it has certainly been enjoyably ridiculous by many a Twitter user, who have spent their morning conjuring up clever digs at the conservative blog. 
 
 But perhaps the most sound reaction to DiCaprio Bear Rape Gate—and the best indicator of how overblown this report became in such a small time—is this very good point from Jeb Bush's communications director Tim Miller. (Yes, that Jeb!) 
 
 Drudge conspiracy theorists, feel free to take a look at the bear fight footage in the trailer below. 
 
 And lastly, our thoughts go out to the media maligned bear of The Revenant, who is likely hiring a publicist, lawyer-ing up, and beginning the early stages of her defamation suit this very minute. 
 
 The Revenant opens in theaters on January 8. 
 
 Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address Subscribe ||||| Advance screenings of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu’s epic “The Revenant,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, are producing all kinds of reactions, all wildly favorable, albeit with caveats. 
 
 The Fox movie, based on Michael Punke’s “novel of revenge,” takes place near Yellowstone, Montana, in 1823. It begins with the same bloody incident that launches the book– the gruesome attack by a grizzly bear on trapper Hugh Glass. Innaritu has taken essentially the following sections of Punke’s book and enlarged them into a feasting by animal on man. The bear flips Glass over on his belly and molests him– dry humps him actually– as he nearly devours him. How Innaritu and DiCaprio did this is a movie mystery because it is as real feeling as Bruce the shark in “Jaws” 40 years ago. It’s as real looking as it could be, and maybe the most frightening moment I’ve seen in a film in eons. 
 
 You can see a little bit of the frightening bear attack in this trailer: 
 
 
 
 Here’s the passage from Punke’s book. Nothing is spared in the filming: 
 
 First the bear attacks Glass: 
 
 The grizzly dropped to all fours and was on him. Glass rolled into a ball, desperate to protect his face and chest. She bit into the back of his neck and lifted him off the ground, shaking him so hard that Glass wondered if his spine might snap. He felt the crunch of her teeth striking the bone of his shoulder blade. Claws raked repeatedly through the flesh of his back and scalp. He screamed in agony. She dropped him, then sank her teeth deep into his thigh and shook him again, lifting him and throwing him to the ground with such force that he lay stunned— conscious, but unable to resist any further. He lay on his back staring up. … 
 
 Then Glass is found after the attack by Harris, one of the trappers: 
 
 …he had never seen human carnage like this, fresh in the wake of attack. Glass was shredded from head to foot. His scalp lay dangling to one side, and it took Harris an instant to recognize the components that made up his face. Worst was his throat. The grizzly’s claws had cut three deep and distinct tracks, beginning at the shoulder and passing straight across his neck. 
 
 Another inch and the claws would have severed Glass’s jugular. As it was, they had laid open his throat, slicing through muscle and exposing his gullet. The claws had also cut the trachea, and Harris watched, horrified, as a large bubble formed in the blood that seeped from the wound. It was the first clear sign that Glass was alive. Harris rolled Glass gently on his side to inspect his back. Nothing remained of his cotton shirt. Blood oozed from deep puncture wounds at his neck and shoulder. 
 
 His right arm flopped unnaturally. From the middle of his back to his waist, the bear’s raking claws left deep, parallel cuts. It reminded Harris of tree trunks he had seen where bears mark their territory, only these marks were etched in flesh instead of wood. On the back of Glass’s thigh, blood seeped through his buckskin breeches. Harris had no idea where to begin…. 
 
 It’s not the only shocking moment in “The Revenant.” Later in the movie– and the novel– Glass (DiCaprio) comes upon a dead horse, removes its insides, takes off his clothes and climbs inside the carcass for warmth during a storm. If you’ve already survived the bear scene, this is the coup de grace. 
 
 And what will Fox do with two potential Best Picture nominees with lead actors and directors in direct competition? They already have a huge box office crowd pleaser with an Oscar performance by Matt Damon in “The Martian.” Every studio should have these problems! They’re almost un-bearable! 
 
 read more of today’s headlines click here ||||| There is one less awards season mystery tonight, as The Revenant — Alejandro G. Inarritu's highly anticipated follow-up to Birdman, the film that brought him three Oscars at the most recent Academy Awards — finally was unveiled. 
 
 The epic period drama, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, screened on Monday night for an audience of awards voters and tastemakers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, and its filmmakers undoubtedly hope it will again be a topic of discussion at that venue on Jan. 14 when Oscar nominations are announced there. 
 
 But is the film the Oscar force many expected it would be before they saw it? 
 
 Reviews have been embargoed until Dec. 4, but the film — which is about a fur trapper, left nearly for dead after a couple of vicious attacks by both men and beast, who then embarks on a quest for both survival and revenge — is already provoking strong reactions, many pro but some con. It is long (running more than two and a half hours), gorgeous and gruesome (several people walked out throughout the movie, apparently unable to take the gore). And while many critics are likely to love it, it is decidedly not everyone's cup of tea. 
 
 Inarritu's new film has some of the look of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, with its use of natural light, and Inarritu's own Birdman, with its long takes. (Revenant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot both those earlier films as well.) It also has some of the texture of True Grit (with its furs and animals and horses and snow); the vengeance-centric theme of Django Unchained (both films' protagonists are driven to survive by a desire to settle scores with the murderer of a loved one) and the man vs. nature dynamic of The Grey (both films involve desperate fights to survive and refusals to die in the face of horrific weather conditions and encounters with animals). 
 
 There are two things that many of the first viewers of The Revenant seem to agree about, judging from tweets and emails sent following Monday's screening and others scheduled around it over the last 48 hours. 
 
 1. DiCaprio — who has received four acting noms over the course of his career, but never has won — couldn't have done a better job and looks like the man to beat in the best actor race. His almost silent performance, with its incredible physical demands, is the sort Clint Eastwood might have given if he had DiCaprio's drive and discipline as a young man. "This was the most difficult film that I think any of us have done," DiCaprio said during a post-screening Q&A, and no one doubted his sincerity. "It was like rock climbing without a rope," Inarritu added. All other serious hopefuls in the best actor race have now shown their hand, and it seems to me that only the similarly Oscar-less Will Smith (Concussion) and Johnny Depp (Black Mass) could pose any real threat to DiCaprio, who is less adept at glad-handing than Smith, if not Depp. 
 
 2) Lubezki — who is coming off of back-to-back best cinematography Oscars, for Gravity and Birdman — is, in all likelihood, going to become the first lenser in history to win three consecutive Oscars. (Three others also won two in a row.) His work on this film, which ranges from silhouetted figures and vast landscapes to riveting battle scenes and 360-degree shots, is showy in the very best sense of the word, and certain to be remembered by his peers (who determine the category nominees), and probably the larger Academy (which picks the winners; the names of the cinematographers do not appear on the ballot, and therefore members might not be inclined, as perhaps they should be, to spread around their love and celebrate, say, Oscar-less Roger Deakins for his work on Sicario). 
 
 But there are already widely diverging opinions as to whether or not the film itself will click with Academy members. I heard from a few right after the screening ended. One wrote to me, "Disappointed with The Revenant. There is no 'there' there. Long. Brutal. No clear eco message. Violent and pointless. Revenge in the wilderness." Another opined, "An absolute masterpiece. Oscars all around." My personal hunch, based not on anecdotal evidence, but on what the Academy historically has and hasn't gone for, is that the film is a slam-dunk for a best picture nomination, with a very real possibility of winning (it's not entirely dissimilar from past winners Dances With Wolves and Braveheart). 
 
 Can anything beat it? Sure. I think The Martian is best poised to do so. That film, which is a Fox release just like The Revenant (which, in turn, is a New Regency production, just like the last two best picture Oscar winners, 12 Years a Slave and Birdman), is fun and a smash-hit at the box office, two terms unlikely to be employed in descriptions of Inarritu's film — plus I think voters will want to give Martian helmer Ridley Scott his first best director Oscar before giving Inarritu a second, and, working backward, are therefore likelier to back Scott's film. But there are certainly other plausible possibilities, too. Perhaps Joy or The Hateful Eight, which have yet to receive their big unveilings. Perhaps Spotlight, propelled by affection from the actors' branch for its incomparable ensemble. Or perhaps an out-of-left-field pick like Straight Outta Compton or The Danish Girl, which are actually about issues that people are dealing with and talking about in the real world today. 
 
 Time will tell.
– Leonardo DiCaprio plays 1820s frontier legend Hugh Glass who runs afoul of a grizzly bear and is left for dead in The Revenant. Thankfully, he survives to put on an epic, yet gory show en route to revenge. Early reports claimed Leo has this year's best male actor Oscar in the bag. Do critics agree? Alejandro Iñárritu's follow-up to Birdman "features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors, none more diligently committed than Mr. DiCaprio," writes Manohla Dargis at the New York Times. "Iñárritu isn't content to merely seduce you with ecstatic beauty and annihilating terror; he wants to blow your mind," and at times he succeeds. But then he "blows it when he moves from the material to the mystical and tries to elevate an ugly story into a spiritual one." "Few heroes in movie history have endured more torment than this one," and "in a role with little dialogue, Mr. DiCaprio summons up impressive resources to convey the horror of Glass's plight," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. But "everything screams primal in The Revenant—the lethal force of a wild animal, the savagery of man against man, the sustaining power of revenge," he adds. "I came out of this would-be epic feeling physically exhausted, psychically mauled, and none the better for wear." The flick isn't for everyone, "but for those to whom the subject matter appeals, it will be among 2015's most memorable theatrical options," writes James Berardinelli at ReelViews. It's "a more visceral and devastating look at seemingly impossible survival than even The Martian," and features "gorgeous cinematography." Its subdued nature also helps showcase "the most raw, primal performance DiCaprio has ever given." A warning: the bear scene may be too bloody for some. But bear the suffering and you'll be rewarded with "the power of cinema unleashed," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. "Surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance," while DiCaprio supplies "a virtuoso performance, thrilling in its brute force and silent eloquence." Travers can't help but mention that bear scene. "The bear is a product of an expert visual-effects team. But not for a second will you doubt you're seeing the real thing," he writes. "This is one for the time capsule."