The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston (played by the ubiquitous James Franco) caused a stir when the trailer for 127 Hours debuted weeks ago—while hiking in Utah, Ralston finds himself trapped in an isolated canyon when a boulder crushes his arm and he then is forced to amputate it to survive. The film's world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival only augmented the hype. Many critics are already talking Oscar for the movie from Slumdog Millionaire Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, with much of the press centered on Franco's nuanced performance. "Few actors could have made us care so much, or disappeared so completely into the role," said Variety.
Chuck Zlotnick / Fox Searchlight
These days, every Clint Eastwood film is greeted with Oscar buzz and his latest, which will have its world premiere as a special presentation at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, is no different. Hereafter reunites the Oscar-winning director with his Invictus star Matt Damon for what Variety's described as "a supernatural thriller" that's "in the vein of The Sixth Sense." The film weaves together three parallel stories dealing with death—a factory worker (Damon) who can talk to the dead, a French journalist who survives a tsunami, and an English boy whose brother is killed in a car crash. The denouement, as Eastwood told MTV.com, sees all three lives collide. "I like to think of it as a chick flick," the director told Entertainment Weekly. "But one that men will like, too. Or at least one that won't make them want to stick a Swiss Army knife into their leg."
Warner Bros.
Following his Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Tom Ford's A Single Man, Colin Firth returns with more Oscar bait. As George VI, the reluctant king of England and father of Queen Elizabeth II, Firth, with the help of a speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), overcomes his stutter and valiantly leads England into the Second World War. Celebrated thespians Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, and Guy Pearce round out the cast. "The big worship winner and potential Oscar magnet I've seen so far at Telluride 2010 is the world premiere of [director] Tom Hooper's The King's Speech," said IndieWire, while The Hollywood Reporter declared Firth can now "claim a place among Britain's finest film actors."
Laurie Sparham/ The Weinstein Company
You may have already heard about the now-infamous girl-on-girl kiss in Black Swan between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, but acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky's companion piece to The Wrestler stands to be so much more. The psychological thriller centers around a pair of rival ballerinas, played by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, who are cast in contrasting roles in a New York City ballet production of Swan Lake. It's already drawing comparisons to Roman Polanski's early works Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion. After Black Swan made its world premiere as the opening film at the Venice Film Festival last week, it received "the longest standing ovation" of any film, "making for one of the strongest Venice openers in recent memory," according to Variety. Despite the hearty reception, Aronofsky's latest looks to be one of the most polarizing films of the year, with The Telegraph saying it "elevates [Portman] from a substantial leading actress to major star likely to be lifting awards in the near future," while The Hollywood Reporter called it "so very, very absurd."
Niko Tavernise / Fox Searchlight
This "Bostonian version of The Wire," as the London Evening Standard puts it, sees actor-cum-director Ben Affleck return to a similar milieu as his critically hailed filmmaking debut, Gone Baby Gone. For The Town, the setting is Charlestown, Massachusetts—a one-square-mile town that has more bank robberies than anywhere in America. One of those crooks is Doug McRay (Affleck), who leads his gang on a series of masked heists until he crosses paths with a bank manager ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Rebecca Hall) during a robbery and falls for her. Mad Men's Jon Hamm plays an FBI agent hot on his tail, The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner portrays Affleck's hothead partner, and a de-glammed Blake Lively (of Gossip Girl fame) stars as a young mother and Affleck's former flame. After making its premiere in Venice, Total Film called The Town "a triumph."
Claire Folger / Warner Bros.
No stranger to playing real-life characters, two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank ( Boys Don't Cry, Million Dollar Baby) returns to "based on a true story" movie territory in Conviction. In the film, Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, an unemployed single mom who puts herself through law school in order to appeal the case of her brother, Kenneth (Sam Rockwell), who was wrongfully convicted of murder. The courtroom drama will make its world premiere at TIFF, and already has many buzzing about whether or not this will be Swank's third victory in a row against The Kids Are All Right star Annette Bening at the Oscars. After viewing the film's trailer, with its array of heavy Massachusetts accents, Movieline's verdict says it all: "Soooold."
Ron Batzdorf / Fox Searchlight
When a rough cut of acclaimed documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's "Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film" premiered at the 2010 TriBeCa Film Festival, it was the fest's "hottest ticket," according to the New York Daily News. Now, the Oscar-winning documentarian behind Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side focuses his lens on the former New York state attorney general who, after winning New York's gubernatorial race in a landslide vote, had it all come crashing down when he was targeted in an FBI prostitution sting. Gibney's documentary explores the scandal that forced Spitzer—now a TV host at CNN—to resign as governor, and features never-before-seen interviews with his frequent companion, "Angelina," his political enemies, and the man himself.
Magnolia Pictures
In 2005's The Constant Gardener, actress Rachel Weisz won an Oscar for her role as a passionate humanitarian who attempted to expose a shady pharmaceutical corporation. This time around, in The Whisteblower, Weisz could be standing up on the Academy Awards stage again. The film is based on the true story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska police officer who arrives in Bosnia as a U.N. monitor in 1999 only to discover that her U.N. colleagues were involved in sex trafficking and prostitution rings. "Something fucked up is going on," Weisz utters in the film's trailer—that has since been taken down—before her suspicious co-worker replies, "Honey, this is Bosnia: These people specialize in fucked up."
Andrei Alexandru
David Lindsay-Abaire decided to adapt his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Rabbit Hole, for the big screen, and enlisted Hedwig and the Angry Inch filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell to direct. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play a happily married couple whose world is turned upside down when they lose their son in a tragic car accident. As Kidman's character Becca tries to regain her place in the world, she strikes up a curious relationship with Jason, the driver who killed her son. Rabbit Hole bears many similarities to Kidman pal Naomi Watts' drama 21 Grams, and though Mitchell may seem like an odd choice for this sort of melancholic material, he has proven to be quite gifted at giving a voice to the disenfranchised. Plus, the project was reportedly so appealing that Kidman allegedly left Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger in favor of it, according to Variety.
Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel, which Time magazine named the "best novel of the decade," has been adapted for the screen. 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland and music video director Mark Romanek, who helmed the poignant video for Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt," come together to bring Never Let Me Go to movie theaters nationwide. Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield play a trio of teens in a British dystopia who spend their childhood in the idyllic boarding school of Hailsham, ( SPOILER ALERT!) only to discover that the sheltered seminary is actually a facility for cloned humans who provide donor organs for transplants. The film adaptation of Ishiguro's last novel, The Remains of the Day, won several Oscars, so this shouldn't disappoint, especially its acclaimed young actors, including Garfield, the newly minted star of the upcoming Spider-Man franchise reboot.
Alex Baile / Fox Seachlight
