Earlier this week, Leonardo DiCaprio was in New York for an advanced industry screening of The Revenant. I’m sure the film will be blown away at the box office by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but it’s not about box office for Leo… this time. It’s about getting Leo that Oscar gold. He’s been super-serious for months, he’s been wearing his Serious Oscar Face and making all of the right moves to claim that Oscar. He can almost taste it! At the screening, Leo spoke to the crowd about the unconventional experience making The Revenant:

“This is a very linear, straightforward, brilliantly simplistic screenplay… we wanted to find the poetry in between that. It was about us immersing ourselves in nature and putting ourselves as close as we could to the struggle of these people and finding the thru line in that process. It’s all a beautiful blur to me… You have to rehearse meticulously and then it’s a mad, intense scramble to capture this magic light, this precious hour and a half…It became very much like an un-humorous Saturday Night Live situation. This is the most difficult film, I think, that any of us have ever done.”

[From The Daily Mail]

We’re going to keep hearing variations on that. Leo struggled with this one. It was a really difficult shoot, one of the most difficult in the history of filmmaking. So surely Leo deserves something, right? Well, as it turns out, Leo is now the favorite for the Best Actor Oscar. Vulture did a rundown of The Revenant’s Oscar chances, which you can read here. Here’s the Leo section:

Let’s start with the big one, Best Actor. Four-time acting nominee Leonardo DiCaprio has famously never taken home the gold, and it’s been presumed all year that The Revenant, where he plays out-for-revenge fur trapper Hugh Glass, will give him his best shot at an Oscar. Having seen the film, I’m inclined to agree, not just because DiCaprio gives his all to the role, but in large part because he doesn’t have overwhelming competition this year. (DiCaprio’s two strongest rivals may be former co-stars Matt Damon and Johnny Depp, neither of whom feels like a front-runner just yet.)

This is more of a physical performance than a verbal one — after his throat is slashed by a bear and he’s left for dead by his comrades, it’s not like Glass is capable of much conversation, anyway — and DiCaprio fully commits to it, delivering a spittle-speckled, blood-soaked revenge turn that successfully exterminates every last vestige of his teen-dream twinkdom. The making of the movie in subzero conditions was nearly as arduous as it looks, and Oscar voters favor actors who’ve been put through their paces. Taken in concert with DiCaprio’s “he’s due” narrative — and the fact that the actor has now entered his 40s, a sweet spot for men to receive Academy recognition — he’s well positioned to finally win.

[From Vulture]

Vulture also makes a case for Tom Hardy to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination, calling his chatty, wily villain “weirdly delightful” but saying that Idris Elba might have the villain-role nomination locked down already. Why not two villain roles though? I think if Leo is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, Tom Hardy should be too! Maybe that’s just because I want to see The Bloke at the Oscars. Anyway… is there any way Leo can lose? Probably. It will depend on how much Matt Damon turns on the charm. I think Michael Fassbender, while buzz-y, won’t engage in a campaign, so he might get nominated and that will be as far as it goes. As for Johnny Depp… if he did a real campaign, that would be very interesting. Hm. Plus, don’t forget Michael Keaton for Spotlight! The Best Actor race is pretty exciting this year.

Photos courtesy of Getty.