Jason Reitman‘s Juno, a likably spunky sit-dram that gradually deepens as it goes along, has corralled attention via a Borys Kit/”Risky Business”/Hollywood Reporter item as a possible Oscar nominee. I agree that Diablo Cody‘s script might compete in the Best Original Screenplay category, but I’m not yet convinced that Juno has the gravitas or philosophical reach to qualify as Best Picture material. Agreeability isn’t a problem; this is a very smart, warm-hearted film. But in the end a film has to coagulate into something more than the sum of its parts.

“[Toronto’s] Four Seasons lobby is the place to ask folks like producer Ted Hope what’s happening with the acquisition of Alan Ball‘s controversial pedophile drama Nothing is Private,” writes Variety‘s Anne Thompson.

She then writes that the film “is challenging for distributors and needs some press support to give it some traction.” But how can there be much press support of the two Private press screenings aren’t happening until Tuesday? I liked Ball’s script and would love to see this film at the public showing the other night. But what was I supposed to do, chase down Hope and beg for tickets? Nobody’s flacking for this thing. Ball hosted a wee-hours party last night. Was I invited? No.

“A sampling of non-distrib folks I’ve spoken to liked it but felt pummeled by its clear-eyed look at some difficult material,” Thompson explains. “One studio marketing exec commented that she had never thought to see so much discussion of girls’ periods in two movies in one year. (The other is Superbad.)” In fact, the head of a distribution company told me earlier today that he’s calling Nothing is Private “a period film.”

“The confidence I’ve always had as an actor was never that I was so good, but that others were so bad.” – Into The Wild director and screenwriter Sean Penn talking earlier today to the Newark Star Ledger‘s Stephen Whitty.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is “all in all, a grand package of hearty acting, design and action with the only caveat being that unlike the first film this [version] can no longer surprise us with its modern twists.” — from Kirk Honeycutt‘s Hollywood Reporter review, showing once again that one man’s dose of strychnine can be another’s cup of tea. Evening update: Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has panned it.

Wow…could the Farrelly Brothers‘ The Heartbreak Kid (DreamWorks, 10.5) actually work on its own terms, independent of (or indifferent to) the legend of the 1972 Elaine May/Bruce Jay Friedman/Neil Simon original?

Variety‘s Lisa Nesselson, having caught the new Ben Stiller version at the Deauville Film Festival, is calling it “a model of intelligent adaptation as well as a free-standing entertainment in its own right…[which] sustains a superlative level of comic invention straight through to final frames.

“With their smart, hilarious update, the Farrelly Bros. make mincemeat of the (often correct) theory that good movies should never be remade. Cleverly bending the template of the…original to their patented brand of profane gagdom, the Farrellys fashion a pitch-perfect riff on the consequences that ensue when getting hitched turns into something out of Hitchcock. Uproarious romp, grounded in believable if gleefully implausible human behavior, is a model of comic timing.”

Wait…”gleefully implausible”? Now I’m worried. Could Nesselson be an easy lay, comedically-speaking?

For me, the foundation of all successful movie comedies is that the basic material — plot, characters, situations, etc. — has to be at least faintly plausible, which is to say faintly recognizable and at least somewhat reflective of real life. (Every piece of material in Some Like It Hot, to name one famous example, is at least faintly plausible.) If it’s flat-out implausible, gleefully or otherwise, a movie is not funny. Sorry, but it’s that simple.

How is this supposed “international” Lions for Lambs trailer different than the domestic one? MGM would do well to put another, differently-cut trailer out fast. All Redford’s character (a college professor) does is deliver stern warnings. And does Tom Cruise (a right-wing U.S. Senator) do anything in this movie except loiter around his office and talk tough politics with Meryl Streep (a journalist)?

“I seem to have a homing device in me that leads me to absolutely every bad review that I’ve ever received. If I’m sitting in the hairdresser I’ll pick up the one thing that has horrific stuff about me in it. Which in one sense is incredibly difficult, but in the other constantly makes me go, `Get better! Get better! Get better!'” — Atonement star Keira Knightley speaking to Times Online‘s Kevin Maher, and saying something that seems to have actually produced results, considering her performance in Joe Wright‘s film.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford “is like an extended death ballad, an account of the final days of the famed Missouri desperado and ex-Confederate Jesse James that manages to breathe vitality into the western movie as a popular art form at the same time that it so magisterially administers the last rites. To a genre that’s itself been pronounced deceased more times than James’s death has been dramatized, we may have to make room in the tomb for another classic.” — from Geoff Pevere‘s 9.8.07 Toronto Star review.

You can absolutely confirm and take to the bank all serious notions of Joe Wright‘s Atonement (Focus Features, 10.12) being a top-ranked Best Picture contender. It’s a shatteringly well-made, deeply felt, rich-aroma romance that will go all the way with (almost all) critics, Academy voters and public alike.

Wright has totally pole-vaulted himself past the level of Pride and Prejudice (a well-made Jane Austen-er that I was only okay with) and taken costars Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and especially Vanessa Redgrave (a locked Best Supporting Actress contender) right along with him.

You can add Focus Features and everyone else associated with Atonement (young Irish actress Saoirse Ronanas, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designers Jacqueline Durran and Sarah Greenwood) as well. Everybody wins with this film, the audience first and foremost.

This is one of those bulls-eye period dramas that feels wonderfully sharp and literate and authentic with emotional tone-perfect performances, and yet the profundity of the payoff is in the way it combines cinematography, editing and sound effects (not to mention one of the most enjoyably splendid uncut Steadicam shots in cinema history — the kind that warrants applause in and of itself) to create a sort of cinematic maelstrom effect.

Atonement leaves you with a sense of great regret and sadness (the feel-good kind) that amounts to something much deeper and fuller than what may be suggested by a casual reading of the plotline — a tale about a woman writer crushed by profound guilt over a harmful thing she did as a youth, caused by foolishness that was amplified by sexual panic. Atonement taps into feelings of regret about all things, about how sadly transitional and here-today-gone-tomorrow so much of life is, and injects them into your system like it came from a syringe.

I’m sorry for having suspected that Variety’s Derek Elley was perhaps being just a tad gung-ho-Britain in his Venice Film Festival review (he wasn’t), I now feel that a piece I wrote two years ago about Knightley not having “it” is out of date (Atonement shows that she’s found it and then some since, and without resorting to any of her old tricks) , and I’m sorry for having taken a cheap shot at McAvoy also. I’ve seen the light and am trying to make up as best I can.

Based upon an Ian McEwan novel published in ’01, Wright’s incredibly well-configured adaptation may not entangle younger males as much as other demos, but it’s an absolute slam dunk with mature viewers, couples and over-30 women.

It feels wrong to describe Atonement as a film with three acts, although it is that, because it doesn’t feel defined by “acts” as much as the way Wright has cut it all together, and I mean with not only dazzle but ultra-fine precision. It replays or refrains certain scenes and does flash-forwards and flashbacks with impugnity, and never once does it feel gimmicky for doing so. It all fits together and hums like Swiss machinery.

I can write more about it down the road, including the plot particulars. I have to get to another screening, and I’m late as it is. There’s no getting to even half of what you’d like to get to at this festival. So much of it is about curses and lost opportunities. I love it, of course.

I’m not saying Atonement is necessarily “the one” (I’m hardly in a position to say anything like that), but unless I’m crazy it will almost certainly end up as one of the five Best Picture nominees. And hail to the great Vanessa Redgrave once again. She’s on-screen at the very end for maybe six or seven minutes (perhaps a touch more), and does nothing except talk to an off-screen interviewer, and she hits an absolute grand slam.

You can forget any serious notions right now of Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Universal, 10.12) being a Best Picture contender. I’m not in the least bit sorry to be the bearer of dispiriting news for the Universal team because this film is an affront to the lost art of story-telling, to logic and clarity, to the tradition of historical costume epics and to God Herself.

I have been to the temple of madness this morning. I have tasted true lunacy. I feel as I’ve been injected with bad mescaline against my will, and that I need to be taken to the nearest hospital in an ambulance. I have seen Cate Blanchett in silver body armor atop a mighty steed and giving a St. Crispin’s Day speech and wearing a long red “war” wig and wondered, “What’s happening here? Is it me or the movie, or should I just take the elevator up to the roof and jump off?”

This is the kind of wretched, at times laughably mudddled historical epic that makes you say to yourself over and over, “Wikipedia’s Elizabeth page will save me, Wikipedia will save me…thank God for Wikipedia!”

Director Shekhar Kapur has delivered a big canvas super-movie that is entirely (surprise!) about the delivery of wow visual elements — costumes, sets, thousands of candles, wigs, more costumes, courtly elites in dapper gowns and well-trimmed beards — and is borderline ludicrous in just about every other department.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age delivers the kind of hammy overwrought insanity that makes Peter Jackson‘s Lord fo the Rings trilogy look like a model of erudition and old-school restraint. It’s the kind of film that makes you want to run out into the street, screaming and hyperventilating and wildly searching for a valium, a drink, a suppository…anything that might provide a measure of relaxation. I chuckled, I howled once or twice, I wanted to cry, and I was open-mouthed with astonishment.

Poor Cate, poor Clive Owen, poor Geoffrey Rush…they must have had a rough idea what they were getting into (Kapur’s first Elizabeth movie was insane also), but this is the kind of thing that just tips over like a huge kettle of gumbo on the floor, soaking everyone’s shoes and sending bypassers scampering.

I’m guessing that Elizabeth: The Golden Age is going to be very, very popular with a certain type of moviegoer and a certain type of critic. It’s definitely a ride and a swim in a pool of fire, but the old “you’ll have to check your brain at the door” maxim doesn’t come close to addressing the situation.

The central conflict of the story is between Spain and the madness that was Catholicism — somewhat akin to the fundamentalist Islamics of today — and Elizabeth’s England. I’d like to explain further but I have to go upstairs and catch Joe Wright‘s Atonement, which is starting in 20 minutes. Talk about states of post-psychedlic, faux-operatic frenzy.

I need to calm down. I need a cup of coffee. I need a Jamba Juice. I need the warm embrace of a friend.

I saw Sean Penn‘s Into The Wild at a special early screening on the Paramount lot several weeks ago, and came away impressed and stirred up. This is an essential “trip” movie — you can’t be any kind of film lover and wait for the DVD — as well as an experience that’s certain to provoke primal passions and arguments. And in terms of focus, passion and visual splendor, it’s easily Sean Penn‘s best-directed film — evidence of serious artistic growth on his part.

It also contains the best performance Emile Hirsch (Alpha Dog, The Girl Next Door) has ever given, even though, truth be told, he’s not the most charismatic of actors. There’s something vaguely feral and muskratty (and even, at times, other-planet-y) about Hirsch. And yet this quality works for Wild and Hirsch’s strange, quiet performance as a misanthropic loner, especially as he seems to uncover every last shade and mood of misanthropic loner-ism there is.

Everyone presumably knows that Penn’s film is the story of Chris McCandless, the idealistic/disaffected son of privelege who died of starvation in 1992 while trying to be Jeremiah Johnson in the Alaskan wilderness, and that it’s based upon a respected and popular book by Jon Krakauer that covered McCandless’s life and death.

The fact that Into The Wild is a very fully felt spiritual journey stems from Penn obviously being a major believer in the McCandless legend. It’s also a wide-open atmosphere movie about the wonders of nature’s grand cathedral, and this seems especially welcome in this day and age when 99% of the population lives inside artificial environments.

But when you boil the spiritual and visual snow out of it, Wild is about a very self-absorbed, somewhat arrogant, not-exactly-genius-level guy who could have found his way out of the Alaskan wilderness area he died in if he’d thought to buy a decent map. I read an opinion piece by an Alaska forest ranger that clarified my suspicions.

McCandless’s dream — to live a primal life free of meaningless, spirit-draining crap — is something we can all relate to or at least understand, but I’m not sure that Penn’s mostly sympathetic portrait of McCandless (although Into The Wild doesn’t shove anything down yoru throat — it lets you come to your own conclusions) is the entire truth of the matter. I don’t think McCandless took nature quite seriously enough (if he hadn’t found that abandoned school bus he probably would have been dead a lot sooner), and that he wound up paying the price.

I respect that Penn has made a longish film — it’s something like 2 hours and 25 minutes — and that he gives it a kind of drifting, wandering feeling, like you’re wandering through the Louvre only more so. This was the right way to go for a film with this subject and story. And the ending definitely works — you can actually feel a sense of release in the death of a twenty-something guy, which is quite a feat when you think about it. And I agree with everyone else about Hal Holbrook giving an award-quality performance as a kindly old guy whom McCandless/Hirsch meets toward the end of the film.

I’ve other questions and comments, but I have to jam. To be continued….