Late last night I added five new images to the gallery for Revolutionary Road, the December 26 release bringing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together for the first time since Titanic under the direction of Kate’s hubby Sam Mendes. You can check those pictures out right here, but don’t leave to look just yet.
The film has long been considered a potential Oscar nominee and I am talking in the major categories including all the top line cats from Best Picture to Best Screenplay Adaptation. However, no one had seen the film, that is until recently. Three reviews of note have found their way online and seeing how I am not seeing the film until December 3 this is the best I can offer in opinion outside of telling you the book it is based on is one of the easiest reads you will come across.
The first review comes from Todd McCarthy at Variety saying:
“Revolutionary Road” is 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. Sam Mendes’ fourth feature reps what many people look for in the realm of serious, grown-up, thoughtful film fare and, led by the powerful performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, teaming for the first time since “Titanic,” Paramount Vantage should be able to push this sad tale to a potent commercial career among discriminating audiences.
Kirk Honeycutt was probably the least impressed at The Hollywood Reporter and adds this:
In the bad-marriage movie sweepstakes, “Revolutionary Road” is no “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” But when sheer nastiness seizes its characters, the vindictiveness and emotional damage are breathtaking. Here’s the real difference: In “Virginia Woolf,” George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for “Revolutionary Road’s” Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don’t they just get a divorce?
Glenn Kenny is pushing aside Oscar buzz and hoping the film finds an audience:
I hear there’s lots of, whaddya call it, Oscar buzz on this thing, and sentimental appeal on account of the Kate and Leonardo thing, and all. Which is all very sweet. That aside, this is a pretty uncompromised, and uncompromisingly bleak picture (although Mendes does let in a glimmer of hope at the end that’s not in the novel and might not even be spotted right away by a lot of the novel’s fans) – one that I hope finds an audience.
I am anxious to check this film out as I am quite ready for a nice little downer period piece, that is as long as it is well acted, and with the story author Richard Yates spun and McCarthy saying screenwriter Justin Haythe “scrupulously adheres to the structure, personalities, perspectives and much of the dialogue of the novel” I think I will like what I see.
Now you can go look at the pictures.
