The Ides of March (2011)

Good stuff. This political thriller about a smart staffer for a liberal Democratic presidential candidate is fresh (unless you've seen the play) and exciting, with good acting by Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and George Clooney, who co-adapted the script, directs his fourth feature (I liked the others, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and Leatherheads (2008), a lot and listed my favorites of his acting credits in The Men Who Stare at Goats, after which he was Oscar-nominated for starring in Up in the Air), and plays the candidate, Governor Morris. One poster shows half of Gosling's (I wrote about him in Blue Valentine after which he starred in All Good Things, Crazy, Stupid, Love., and Drive) face covered by half of Clooney's face, the latter a TIME magazine cover story. I, for one, see only Gosling's, which is no accident, since it's his, Stephen's, story. Hoffman (covered in Pirate Radio, then he made Jack Goes Boating and Moneyball) and Giamatti (after I wrote about him in Cold Souls he co-starred in The Last Station and starred in Barney's Version and Win Win) have supporting yet important and impassioned roles as the heads of two campaigns. Also featured as "the" intern is Evan Rachel Wood (my faves are listed in Whatever Works but didn't include her star turn in the last two episodes of Mildred Pierce on HBO) and Marisa Tomei (details in Cyrus, see also The Lincoln Lawyer and Crazy, Stupid, Love.) as a hard-ass reporter.

The play, Farragut North by Beau Willimon, is named after a DC Metro stop and set at the Iowa primary, but Clooney and co-adaptors Grant Heslov (covered in The Men Who Stare at Goats, which he directed) and Willimon chose to move it mostly to Cincinnati (Clooney grew up in parts of Kentucky and Ohio, including the Cincinnati suburbs) and center it around the Ohio primary. There are quite a few establishing shots of Cincinnati, though apparently Michigan stands in for Ohio in some places. One of my favorite scenes is the discussion between Morris and his wife in the campaign bus. You can see only the bottom half of Clooney's face as his lips twitch in and out of his disarming smile. It's sweet and intimate. Someone else had a different agenda while watching that scene, because he or she posted on imdb that the road signs were from Michigan, not Ohio.

Noted composer Alexandre Desplat (the hits keep coming--I wrote about him in both The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Ghost Writer, after which he scored The King's Speech, The Tree of Life, and A Better Life) provides thriller-type music, a short loop of which you can hear by going to this link and clicking Enter the Site (the soundtrack is due to be released next month).

This movie won one and was nominated for another award at the Venice Film Festival. More are likely. Check it out while it's still playing.