I was assured several months ago by producer Neal Dodson that J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year would definitely be diving into the award-season melee. So where is it and what’s the word? Still deeply in post, I was told last night at the A24 party at Michael’s on Simcoe. But the first teaser will pop sometime next week. Set in 1981 Manhattan and focusing mainly on a married couple (Abel and Ann Morales) played by Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year is allegedly not that violent. It’s basically a good, strong, super-tasty Sidney Lumet film, I was assured. More relationship-driven than anything else. The relative lack of shootings and face-beatings may disappoint the primitives who would pay to see it for precisely that element, but them’s the breaks. Chandor (All Is Lost, Margin Call) is not a panderer — he makes complex, real-deal, human-scale films. The release date will be late in the year, I was informed. Costarring David Oyelowo (just pronounce it “oh-yellow”), the great Albert Brooks plus Alessandro Nivola, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Williams, etc.

Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain in J.C. Chandor/’s A Most Violent Year.