RevolutionaryRoad Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) don't quite have things figured out yet. I mean, they pretty much have each other pegged, enjoying a marriage-less relationship, keeping each other warm on those cold Colorado nights, and they know that they want to bring a kid into this world -- well, want to or not, the baby's coming, and so they'll keep it warm as well.

Their parents won't be of much help. After all, his (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels) are making plans to take off for Europe just before the baby's due, a trip years in the making and selfish as all get out, while hers passed away some time back. So Burt and Verona decide to visit other family and friends, looking for people they can depend on in places they could grow up in, let alone grow old in -- looking for a place that might help them figure out together the whys and hows of keeping it all together.

Clockwise from upper left: Revolutionary Road, Defiance, He's Just Not That Into You, The Graduate, Anaconda, Fletch.

Revolutionary Road
Leonardo DiCaprio re-teamed with Kate Winslet, Michael Sheen Shannon * in a blistering supporting role, Sam Mendes examining suburbia, an adaptation of a classic American novel by Richard Yates; what could possibly go wrong? "In truth, it's both relentlessly grim and nearly pointless," wrote Jeffrey M. Anderson. "The only thing it does really well is create a feeling of suffocation." Also on Blu-ray. My choice: Rent it.

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He's Just Not That Into You
Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Bradley Cooper and Scarlet Johansson star in a movie that will rot your brain. Put more kindly by William Goss: "This film feels more like a one night stand than anything else: you'll enjoy taking it home overnight, but when tomorrow comes, it's less a matter of calling it as merely recalling it." Also on Blu-ray. My choice: Skip it.

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Defiance
Daniel Craig drinks martinis protects fellow Jews from the Nazis in Edward Zwick's drama, based on a true story. "An uneasy mix of action and suspense with meaningful themes, of emotion and adrenaline," opined James Rocchi. "You sincerely hope it sends people to the truth even as it fails as fiction." Also on Blu-ray. My choice: Rent it.

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After the jump: Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray picks, and a "legendary" Collector's Corner!

Confession: I have been watching the Oscars for as long as I can remember but I have never, and I mean ever, managed to see all five best picture contenders before the ceremony. Embarrassing? Maybe. But this year I have made myself a promise. I'm going to see all five films before the winner is announced on Sunday.

Lord knows I watch a lot of movies, so how did these five slip through the cracks? I don't want to point the finger, but I blame the Academy -- wait, hear me out. This was the year that I thought I was on top of my game. So like most of the civilized world I went to see The Dark Knight assuming that it was an Oscar lock (and how wrong I was). Then, I thought, hey, Revolutionary Road is bound for glory, right? I'll catch it early, but nope, other than an acting nod for Michael Shannon, I had managed to pick another dud.

Like most people, I have a job and a life outside of a movie theater (even though it doesn't seem that way sometimes), so there isn't always as many hours in the day to see all the movies I would like. I usually end up seeing the rest of the films after the awards season has long past. I have probably wasted a little more time than I should have watching films that didn't have a chance in hell of making it to the podium -- Thanks a lot Mr. Shyamalan.

It's hard to ignore the Oscar polish involved in Revolutionary Road; an Oscar-winning director, Sam Mendes, reunites the stars of the Oscar-gobbling Titanic. To that end, Mendes does his best to make the film look serious and prestigious. And if you give it a cursory glance it's possible to come away with the impression that it is indeed a great and important film. But in truth, it's both relentlessly grim and nearly pointless.

It's "nearly" pointless because the subject matter -- that the suburbs have mutated and destroyed the American spirit -- has already been covered, many, many times in far better films, ranging from scary (Blue Velvet) to romantic (Far from Heaven) to funny (Edward Scissorhands). In a way, those outside genre elements helped keep the material from becoming overbearing. For Revolutionary Road, Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe have adapted a novel by Richard Yates, which was groundbreaking for its time; Yates wrote it in 1961 when polite society just didn't discuss such things as infidelity, ennui, drugs and booze and insanity. But Mendes creates a period picture and thus fails to justify why the material is still relevant in 2008, especially when this stuff has by now become its own movie subgenre. (Click on "Suburban Dysfunction" at allmovie.com.) The main factor for Mendes is that it's an "important novel." Never mind why -- or when.

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?

In a week littered with plenty of big-budget trailers piggy-backing on James Bond's undeniable popularity (Quantum of Solace just had the biggest opening day of any Bond film to date), the new one for Sam Mendes' domestic drama Revolutionary Road very nearly slipped through the cracks (thanks to Rob for passing it on, and Variety's Anne Thompson for premiering it).

This trailer plays more like a teaser than its predecessor, and yet it's a simple and short way to lure one into the suburban woes of stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. The very slightest rumbles and mumbles of its worthiness as an awards contender this season are beginning to issue from the earliest guild screenings, and I suspect that the weeks to come will only bring more buzz before the film bows in limited release the day after Christmas -- the same strategy that Paramount Vantage employed last year with a little film they like to call There Will Be Blood. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should really get back to this book Eugene kept going on about...

It's a common experience to read a book slated for a film adaptation and then approach the movie, if at all, with a trepidation bordering on fear. As an optimist who doesn't get too offended when his favorite stories get changed for a different medium, I generally try to minimize that reaction. Yet that is exactly how I feel about Stephen Daldry's imminent adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. A large part of me is convinced that Schlink's lovely, challenging little novel – almost more of an essay than a novel, really – can't possibly survive Daldry's questionable prestige picture instincts. The book demands a small film, melancholy, withdrawn. Can we get that from one of the year's big Oscar hopefuls?

The logline IMDb plot summary [Ed.: corrected upon being informed that this is not the official studio "logline"] is already all wrong: "Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk is reunited with his former lover (Winslet) as she defends herself in a war-crime trial." No. I'm loath to give too much away, but "reunited" is not the right word. In fact, the lack of a bona fide reunion between the two is part of what makes the novel so interesting, and the reason for that lack of reunion is at the heart of the moral questions it grapples with.

In news that is equally rumored and dreaded, it looks like the Weinsteins' haste to get The Reader in the running for this year's awards season might be a matter of John Hillcoat's anticipated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel, The Road, not being ready for its limited release a month from now, let alone year's end.

It's bad enough that neither film was ready for any of the big fall film festivals, but a good friend told me something similar three days ago, and now, Kristopher Tapley at In Contention and Dave Karger's EW Oscar Watch are talking along the same lines. I can't say that I'm the same William who posted the following reaction on Karger's page -- and I quote: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" -- but my own sentiments on the (possible) move aren't all that far off.

For that matter, my feelings on the novel and film themselves are akin to those of our own Eugene Novikov: that the book is merely Damn Good, but could make for a Great movie. We may not have a poster, or a trailer, or a fully functioning website just yet, but for all the Weinsteins' release date shell games, I can't help but think they have more to lose holding off on this than The Reader, which producer Scott Rudin took his name off after it was bumped up to contend with star Kate Winslet's other awards prospect, Revolutionary Road (itself based on an acclaimed novel).

I mean, I'm not exactly wishing that The Reader is Winslet's next All the King's Men or anything, but is this studio not big enough for the both of them? Or is this year merely not long enough?

Their romance in Titanic was one for the record books. Now Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are getting to canoodle once again in Revolutionary Road. The above pic is part of the poster for the film, which has popped up over at USA Today. The guy died too quickly last time, and thus we never got to see what the future had in store for Jack and Rose. So now we get Frank and April -- a young, successful couple in the '50s, who move to France and watch things crumble. Man, it's so much more hopeful when they die young. Now this whole ordeal could be sending Winslet right into the world of Erica Jong and Fear of Flying.

Yay! After waiting months for that elusive deal to finalize, The Hollywood Reporter posts that Oscilloscope Pictures has picked up Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father. The theatrical release will begin in New York on October 31. Go see it. Please. Don't read anything more. Just go.

In other Big Apple news, Yahoo has got a trailer up for Synecdoche, New York, which I'm dying to see. Besides growing up near Schenectady, where part of the film takes place, it's Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. And it also has a mind-boggling, a-mazing cast.

Finally a little bit for the rumor hounds -- EW says that now Jude Law might play Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. (Not Colin Farrell or Russell Crowe.) Robert Downey Jr. and Law -- interesting... What do you think?

Have you read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates? Huh? You have? Then why the hell haven't you told me about it? What's your problem, anyway? And where has this book been all my life?

There's a movie version of Revolutionary Road on the way, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and directed by Sam Mendes. It's set to be released at Christmastime, and is widely expected to be a major player in the Oscar race. But here I have to betray this column's reason for being. F*** the movie. Read the book.

Published in 1961, Yates's first novel was more acclaimed than popular. It is a merciless, intense and pitch-black social satire – funny only in the most uncomfortable way, like being cleverly mocked by someone who sees clean through to your soul. The jacket pitches it as being about "the opulent desolation of the American suburbs," but Revolutionary Road is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of well-to-do suburbanites. It's about our attitudes toward life and love and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about anything else I've ever read.