Kuala Lampur, Oct. 17 -- OCTOBER 17 - As critically acclaimed as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu may have been throughout his career, I have always found his filmography to be something of a mixed bag.

I quite liked his raw, multi-narrative debut Amores Perros, but his subsequent, heavily decorated works, films like 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, and especially the Oscar-sweeping Birdman, have always felt a bit too obviously like calculated Oscar-bait to me.

They often struck me as arthouse films designed specifically for people who don't actually watch or like arthouse films, which is really just a polite way of saying they are slickly packaged like high art rather than genuinely being one.

With that kind of track record, I obviously had majo...