Foxcatcher emerges as the year's first Best Picture contender
(source: Cinema Blend)
Bennett Miller’s dramatic Foxcatcher made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, several top critics who were able to take in Miller’s latest started throwing around the "O" word.
Talk of anyone "sweeping" an Oscar season before we’ve had a chance to see 99% of the movies that should compete is lunacy. It isn’t even the halfway mark of the calendar year, and studios regularly back-load their strongest awards contenders in the fourth quarter, so that contending movies are fresh in the minds of nominating Academy members.
Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher made a splash in France with its powerful debut. Variety calls it "the sole credible awards-season heavyweight to have emerged from this year’s Cannes Film Festival," and comments, "Despite its hefty 134-minute running time, Foxcatcher doesn’t have an ounce of the proverbial narrative fat."
The Hollywood Reporter also praised Bennett Miller’s true-crime saga, calling it "a superbly modulated study of a twisted mind with a career-changing performance by Steve Carell."
In the film, Steve Carell plays schizophrenic American mogul John DuPont, who enters into a deadly standoff with former Olympic wrestling champion Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) after DuPont murders Schultz’s brother (played by Mark Ruffalo). Miller almost had the film ready to contend in last year’s Oscar race, but the decision was made to hold it until later this year.
