Cinematical

Oscar season is heating up, and with two hotly-anticipated and much buzzed-about flicks currently screening for critics, early word on both Australia and Revolutionary Road is beginning to leak out. First up, Australia's Herald Son has published one of the first reviews of Baz Lurhman's Australia -- starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman -- saying it "features some of the most beautiful photography ever seen in an Australian film, from the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley to the Northern Territory in the midst of the wet season," and that the film "has international blockbuster written all over it." Over at the Times Online UK, they've given the flick four out of five stars, and claim "Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited, and over-budget epic Australia manages, against the odds, to avoid turning into one big sunburnt stereotype about Godzone country. Instead, in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly, beautiful and breathtakingly cruel" But what do American audiences think? We'll find out a bit later in the week. Australia arrives in theaters on November 21.



Regarding Revolutionary Road (which is a book I'm reading now, and every couple of pages it makes me want to tell my wife I love her), Variety praises the flick -- which reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the big screen for the first time since Titanic -- saying it's "a very good bigscreen adaptation of an outstanding American novel -- faithful, intelligent, admirably acted, superbly shot. It also offers a near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one." Glen Kenny adds that it's "a pretty splendid film, far and away the best Mendes has made." Revolutionary Road hits theaters on December 26.



Which are you more interested in watching: Australia or Revolutionary Road?