I make it no surprise that I love movies. From being brought up in a family that enjoyed heading to the local cinemas for us to bond to having a brother finishing his screenwriting degree at UNCSA, being a film buff was bound to happen eventually. With awards season coming up (Academy Awards, Golden Globes, etc.), my movie-nerdom reaches its zenith, and this year is special in particular because of all of the attention famed actor Leonardo DiCaprio is earning through his recent role in "The Revenant".

Leo is the perfect example of the Cinderella sports team making the championship game only to lose in the last few seconds to the better team (such as Matthew McConaughey in "Dallas Buyers Club"). Year after year, fans of the wide-eyed actor were subjected to Best Actor nominations for roles in films such as "The Aviator", "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", and "Blood Diamond", with snubs in "Django Unchained" and "The Wolf of Wall Street". Each time, though, fans were left with Leo smiling and nodding in silent despair.

However, that may change with his role in the Western drama "The Revenant". Set during the U.S.'s gradual expansion via the Louisiana Purchase, DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a fur-trapper who survives a gruesome bear attack and is left for dead by his partners. Surviving the attack but badly wounded and stripped of his supplies, Glass scouts the terrain looking for his comrades to get revenge. (Because the movie has just been released in theaters and non-spoiler images are sparse, I will instead just use Leo Oscar memes to keep the ball rolling).

While that may sound like a standard premise for a movie, it is accentuated by the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, all shot using natural lighting rather than stage lighting. Leo's performance has been widely praised, and deservedly so. Trying to bring an adapted/historical figure onto the big screen is not an easy feat, as critics will always nitpick at anything that is different from the source material. In the case of Hugh Glass, it was vitally important to make him appear natural because of the mythos that has been built around his survival and ventures. Suffice to say, Leo pulls off the feat and will most likely win the Oscar for two reasons: the role was substantially different that his normal fare, and his approach to preparing for the role.

Consider the roles that DiCaprio took over the past two decades. While finely done for the most part, they basically carried the same traits:

*Deep-thinking

*Eccentric

*Screaming out of anger

As Hugh Glass, though, he is much more silent throughout the movie, having only a dozen of lines throughout the two and a half hour running time. Part of this is due to the character he was portraying (the silent, woodsman) and part of it is due to the bear attack leaving his voice nearly inaudible. This leaves him down to just nonverbal cues and pain-induced grunts. In one scene in particular, Glass is strapped to a makeshift medical board and is desperately trying to tell one of his hunters the truth about his adversary, Fitzgerald, and you can tell just from the mumbled, intense stares on Glass' face that it is a matter of life or death that the truth be known.

DiCaprio also took advantage of the harsh surroundings of the setting for his role, presumably "eating raw bison liver, swimming in icy lakes, and sleeping in dead animals," according to his press interviews. While method acting for movies isn't rare, to actually immerse yourself heavily into the role to the point of possible injury or illness is devotion to the craft, something the Academy shouldn't ignore.

Go see "The Revenant" for a variety of reasons, including the beautiful cinematography and the reimagined feel of 1800s American expansion. Who knows, you may walk away watching the film thinking, "Leo may actually pull it off this year."

Unless Bryan Cranston has something to say about it. Then he's screwed.