The Ides of March

3/5

If there's one big reason to see this film, it's the acting. Everyone in this movie was phenomenal, and Ryan Gosling will probably be seeing his name on the list of nominees for best actor. I loved how every character was written and every one of htem had an incredible amount of depth. My issues came up with the story telling. It's based off of a play that I am unfamiliar with, but the lines that were spoken in the film were blatant, lacking any real subtlety and not giving the audience too much of a chance to speculate. And in a fictional election story, I'd love to have some audience speculation. It resulted in a few reveals that were a bit soap-opera-y. It can be a little bit annoying, but for the most part I guess it doesn't bother me all that much. I also had issues with one character portrayed as the cliche writer. Regardless on how realistic she may or may not have been, she felt phoned in with not nearly as much depth as every character around her. She was so central to the story that I would have loved to know more about her. And her actions and her speech felt so phoned in and so last minute that it really was more annoying that she was on screen rather than annoying or disgusting at what she was doing. Still, Gosling, Clooney, Giamattie, Hoffman, and Evan Rachel Wood all did pretty great jobs so it's worth to see for these performances, I'm sure we'll see at least one or two names on the Oscar lists this year.