I am piecing together my Best Picture predictions for debut either tomorrow or this Friday, September 2, and one piece of news that will definitely play a role in the rankings is today’s premiere of George Clooney’s The Ides of March, which opened the 68th Venice Film Festival ahead of its October 7 release.
I will be seeing the film on September 8 at the Toronto International Film Festival so I did my best to merely skim the first reviews of the film and not take away too much and have included select snippets for inclusion here. You can click on the links if you’re interested in getting more information, but from what I was able to garner from the opinions, it sounds like Ryan Gosling is again a star and that the film is quick stylish and slick, but perhaps a bit too full of itself. Phedon Papamichael‘s “intense” camerawork and Alexandre Desplat‘s “evocative” score seem to be getting high marks along with the performances, but the overall impression the film seems to be a “shrug” as Variety‘s Justin Chang puts it.
Here are the snippets…
Guy Lodge at In Contention writes:
Clooney still can’t resist overcooking some circular ironies to the point where they aren’t ironic anymore, and Alexandre Desplat’s jittery, flute-heavy score and Phedon Papamichael’s over-underlit cinematography (Clooney’s evidently a more original stylist with a Robert Elswit by his side) crank the dramatics a little more eagerly than the script does.
Oliver Lyttelton at The Playlist writes:
[It] moves along at a fair old clip, thanks to Stephen Mirrione’s typically taut editing, and another fine, surprising score from Alexandre Desplat. This U.K. based writer is admittedly something of a U.S. politics junkie (we pretty much know “The West Wing” off by heart. All of it. Test us), but we had a blast. Whether wider audiences enjoy it as much remains to be seen (although we’re fairly sure that it’s early anointment as an Oscar front-runner will disappear quickly), but it at least happily confirms that Clooney the director is here to stay.
Deborah Young at The Hollywood Reporter opens her review with:
Had writer/director George Clooney and his co-scripters Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon injected The Ides of March with the intimate political conviction that made Good Night, and Good Luck a critical standout and a frontrunner for liberal patrons, the exit polls would be more positive on this political thriller juggling idealism and corruption with fairly predictable results. Not just its softer narrative and dingy Midwestern setting but its structural lack of heroics is likely to keep the popular vote down on Ides, which can in any case bank on tense pacing and a superb cast, lead by a ruthlessly idealistic Ryan Gosling, to win festival votes beginning with its Venice bow.
Justin Chang at Variety writes:
Ho-hum insights into the corruption of American politics are treated like staggering revelations in The Ides of March. […] Working with Willimon and Good Night, and Good Luck writing-producing partner Grant Heslov, Clooney has seized every opportunity to pepper the material with political in-jokes and references designed to make presumably left-leaning viewers chuckle and groan in self-recognition; the right wing, for its part, is clearly not one of the targeted quadrants here. Yet as it sneers at the inherent venality of politics and despairs over the gulf between stump-speech promises and meaningful political change, The Ides of March wallows in its own superiority to the point where its cynical pose looks almost naive.
David Gritten for Thompson on Hollywood adds:
[This] political thriller fits Venice like a silk glove. It’s smart, sophisticated and politically astute, written with a shrewd intelligence and featuring stars (Clooney himself, Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei) who offer Hollywood glamour while engaging in work that’s more than a cut above routine Hollywood product. The Ides of March also offers two terrific supporting performances from Grade-A character actors (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giammatti), doing the kind of work that makes European critics and audiences sit up and take notice.
Stay tuned as my first Oscar predictions will be arriving shortly, beginning with Best Picture and continuing with Actor, Actress, the Supporting categories and Director before I make my way to Toronto on September 7 for my stay from September 8-15. In the meantime, here is the trailer for The Ides of March once again and you can get more information on the film right here.
