Oscar 2012 contenders so far: "The Ides of March", "Carnage", "A Dangerous Method" and "Shame" - From Venice With Love

Venice Film Festival is synonym of cinematic quality and it seems that this year's edition of the film festival is really strong, with really solid movies that look like serious Oscar contenders. The film festival isn't over yet, but there are a lot of reviews about some of the most interesting titles of the Oscar race. There's no THAT RAVED movie this year like 2010's Black Swan, the biggest "worse" was Madonna's W.E. (smashed by critics) and Steven Soderbergh's Contagion didn't match the big expectations around itself in spite of the positive reviews, but the film festival seems to have a money-worthy selection... So, let me present you the biggest Oscar contenders from Venice, so far...

Genre: Drama; Mystery/Suspense;

Director: George Clooney

Starring: Ryan Gosling; George Clooney; Philip Seymour Hoffman; Paul Giamatti; Marisa Tomei; Jeffrey Wright; Evan Rachel Wood

Release date: 31st August, 2011 (Venice Film Festival); 7th October, 2011 (USA);

"A smart, confident kick start to what looks like being a notably strong Venice film festival, The Ides of March showcases George Clooney, its director, co/writer and joint lead actor, back in the politically committed mood that spawned Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck. A political thriller exploring themes of loyalty, ambition and the gap between public ideals and private fallibility, it engages the brain within the context of a solid entertainment. (...) And Evan Rachel Wood, an actress who seems to gain in stature with every role, excels as a bright young Morris intern with ambitions that land her in deep trouble. (...) Gosling takes the on-screen honours. There is a stillness and certainty about his acting, a commanding ability to convey complex emotions in the flicker of an eye. No surprise, then, that he is currently Hollywood’s most sought after young lead."

by David Gritten in Daily Telegraph

"George Clooney and his co-writers, partner Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, have successfully and effectively adapted to the big screen Willimon’s stage play, “Farragut North.” Unlike mots movies based on theatrical productions, Ides of March does not betray its origins and feels like a “real” movie, in large part due to the strategy taken by Clooney the director and the support elicited from its superlative technical crew. Overall, “The Ides of March” is a better, more signficant picture than Clooney’s 2005 Oscar-nominated “Good Night, and Good Luck,” whose scope was after all more limited, as well as “Micahel Clayton,” in which Clooney starred in an Oscar-nominated performance, and to which it bears some resemblance. (...) Watching Ryan Gosling in yet another towering performance, as George Clooney’s campaign press secretary, reaffirms my belief that Gosling is not just the brilliant actor that Sean Penn was for his generation, but that he may well be the most gifted and verstaile actor working today."

by Emanuel Levy in EmanuelLevy.Com

"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. (...) Still the fine cast makes every line of dialogue count, like the memorable final exchange between Paul and Stephen outside a churchyard, as their lives take different paths. (...) Even Wood, for all her sexual incorrectness, evokes sympathy when she gets into major trouble. Classy and professional throughout, the technical work gracefully holds all the threads together. Director of photography Phedon Papamichael works the cold, washed-out grays of Cincinnati into a quietly intense atmosphere piece, culminating in an electrifying nocturnal show-down between Stephen and Morris set, for no particular reason, in a restaurant kitchen."

by Deborah Young in Hollywood Reporter

Oscar potential categories:
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Leading Actor (Ryan Gosling)
Best Supporting Actor (George Clooney)
Best Supporting Actress (Evan Rachel Wood)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Cinematography
Best Editing

Director: Roman Polanski

Starring: Jodie Foster; John C. Reilly; Kate Winslet; Christoph Waltz;

Release date: 1st September, 2011 (Venice Film Festival); 16th December, 2011 (USA);

"Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old, this adaptation of Yasmina Reza's award-winning play God of Carnage fully delivers the laughs and savagery of the stage piece while entirely convincing as having been shot in New York, even though it was filmed in Paris for well-known reasons. (...) Winslet abandons any idea of providing Nancy with a genuine demure side, pushing the character's dissatisfactions to the surface perhaps to early. Waltz, on the other hand, gives the distracted Alan any number of shadings that give a vibrant new definition to perhaps the most elusive character in the piece. Overall, the thespian advantage would have to go to Broadway, but the cast here nonetheless holds its own and puts the characters across with force and definition."

by Todd McCarthy in Hollywood Reporter

"Reilly is on typically good form, letting his amiable persona slide gradually to reveal a caveman underneath, while Waltz dips into grotesque once or twice early on, but is otherwise excellent, suggesting a life beyond the villains he’s so far played for American audiences. For this writer, it’s Jodie Foster who was the highlight. The double Oscar-winner has been on a sort of auto-pilot of late, but “Carnage” is a vital reminder of her talents; she’s appropriately brittle and sanctimonious, but she’s also the only cast member to let the audience feel something close to sympathy for their character, while never letting her off the hook."

by Oliver Lyttelton in The Playlist

"Jodie Foster, who gives a wicked, Oscar-worthy comic performance, is the neurotically thin, bleeding-heart liberal mother of the victim, John C Reilly her well-fed easy-going tradesman husband. Little attempt is made to disguise the fact that this is the film of a play. And the dramatic gears grind a little during certain shifts of allegiance along couple and gender lines. But making the audience feel claustrophobic is central to Carnage's method: we're penned in, unable to leave this airless apartment with its collection of liberal gewgaws from component hi-fi to African totems to real logs (presumably never used) stacked by the marble fireplace. The film also celebrates an old-fashioned, underrated cinematic pleasure: the chance to see an ensemble cast of fine actors sparring with each other, and at the top of their game."

by Lee Marshall in London Evening Standard

Oscar potential categories:

Best Leading Actress (Jodie Foster)

Best Leading/Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz)

Genre: Drama;

Director: David Cronenberg

Starring: Michael Fassbender; Keira Knightley; Viggo Mortense; Vincent Cassel;

Release date: 2nd September, 2011 (Venice Film Festival); 23rd November, 2011 (USA);

"Precise, lucid and thrillingly disciplined, this story of boundary-testing in the early days of psychoanalysis is brought to vivid life by the outstanding lead performances of Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. (...) Despite having to cover stages in the trio's relationships spread over many years, Hampton's screenplay utterly coheres and never feels episodic. (...) Cronenberg's direction is at one with the writer's diamond-hard rigor; cinematographer Peter Suschitzky provides visuals of a pristine purity augmented by the immaculate fin de l'epoch settings, while the editing has a bracing sharpness than can only be compared to Kubrick's. Along with Knightley's excellent work as a character with a very long emotional arc indeed, Fassbender brilliantly conveys Jung's intelligence, urge to propriety and irresistible hunger for shedding light on the mysteries of the human interior. A drier, more contained figure, Freud is brought wonderfully to life by Mortensen in a bit of unexpected casting that proves entirely successful."

by Todd McCarthy in Hollywood Reporter

"It relies substantially on the text and quietly effective performances of Michael Fassbender as Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Freud. Only Keira Knightley as Spielrein has to do much emoting as the story progresses through the years up to the First World War. Though playing against two performers of considerable weight, she more than holds her own from the moment she arrives on the scene, a hysterical patient, to the time when her love for Jung is finally reciprocated. (...) Cronenberg and his actors do their best to show that there is no such thing as normalcy since Jung, Freud and Spielrein, cannot cure themselves any more than they can guarantee to help their patients."

by Derek Malcolm in This is London

"Carrying on from her successful run of dramatic turns, Keira Knightley does a tremendous job in the part, for being one of the most photographed woman in the world she has no fear of being ugly and repellent to the audience and we live with her her pain and suffering. She was so good it was painful to watch, it felt like we were intruding into the life of this very young and deeply troubled woman. The setting of the film is Switzerland in the late 1800′s and the perfectionist Cronenberg painstakingly does a good job recreating the atmosphere of those times but the story never goes anywhere."

by Andrea Pasquettin in WhatCulture!

Oscar potential categories:

Best Leading Actress (Keira Knightley)

Best Supporting Actor (Viggo Mortensen)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Best Art Direction

Best Costume Design

Director: Steve McQueen

Starring: Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan

Release date: 4th September, 2011 (Venice Film Festival);

"Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that’s as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs. Steve McQueen’s second feature, after his exceptional debut with Hunger in 2008, may ultimately prove too psychologically pat in confronting its subject’s problem, but its dramatic and stylistic prowess provides a cinematic jolt that is bracing to experience. This sexually raw film will stir considerable excitement among critics and serious audiences, making it an attractive proposition for an enterprising distributor in the wake of festival play in Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York. (...) Exposing herself emotionally and physicly as she never has before, Mulligan is terrific in this unexpected role of a deeply wounded and troubled soul."

by Todd McCarthy in Hollywood Reporter

"Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan give dynamite performances in Shame, a terrific second feature from the British artist Steve McQueen. Fassbender is Brandon, a sex-addicted corporate drone, directing a radioactive stare at random women across the aisle on the New York subway. Mulligan plays Sissy, his sister, who sings for her supper, self-harms for kicks and is surely pointed towards disaster. "We're not bad people," Sissy assures her sibling. "We just come from a bad place. (...) Shame feels less formal, less rooted in the language of the art installation than McQueen's previous film, Hunger, and is all the more satisfying for that. This is fluid, rigorous, serious cinema; the best kind of adult movie."

by Xan Brooks in The Guardian

"As English-language directorial debuts in the last few years go, Steve McQueen‘s “Hunger” ranks up there as one of the most uncompromising. An award-winning, sometimes controversial British artist, McQueen chose to move into feature film by examining the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, managing not to flinch from any of the grim details, using takes of up to 20 minutes in length, and showcasing a tour-de-force performance from the now firmly-planted-on-the-A-list Michael Fassbender. (...) Mulligan, who’s superb, giving a performance on the level of her previously acclaimed work, is equally damaged: desperately needy and dying for her brother to connect with her, seemingly unaware that the very sight of her has sent him into a tailspin. If that makes it sound as if the performance is a grim one, it’s anything but; the “An Education” star is as loose and lively as she’s ever been, aided by a Holly Golightly-esque wardrobe. (...) We do however, have some reservations, which stop us from feeling that the film is the equal of McQueen’s debut. The script is mostly strong, but the climactic final reel events, while well-executed, feel like they’ve come from a cheaper piece of work."

by Oliver Lyttelton in The Playlist

Oscar potential categories:

Best Leading Actor (Michael Fassebender)

Best Supporting Actress (Carey Mulligan)

Best Original Screenplay