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Chicago – Why doesn’t “Carnage” live up to its pedigree? With a certified genius like Roman Polanski behind the camera, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play as its source, and a cast in which three of the only four roles are played by actors who have won Oscars, one might have expected this to be a creative home run. It’s not. It’s a decent rental and there are some strong performances, but it’s not quite what it should have been. And a mediocre Blu-ray release from Sony does nothing to change that opinion.

Blu-ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster & John C. Reilly) are in a socially awkward position. Their son has been assaulted and they have invited the abuser’s parents, Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet & Christoph Waltz), over to discuss the incident. As they cordially converse over cobbler, social and moral issues come to the surface and eventually explode.

Sometimes it’s easy to separate the artist from his art. I had no problem doing that with Roman Polanski’s last film, The Ghost Writer, because it touched not one iota on the offscreen furor around him, related to his admitted rape of a 13-year-old girl and subsequent flight from justice. But his latest, Carnage, makes it much harder. Oh, it doesn’t appear at first, and not even through much of the film’s brisk 79-minute runtime, that there’s any connection whatsoever to Polanski’s circumstances. In the wake of a playground fight that left one of their preteen sons slightly injured, two well-off Brooklyn couples meet to discuss, in civilized terms and in the spirit of community, how the aggressor can make amends to the injured. There’s Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster: The Brave One), a firm adherent of liberal social justice who instigated the get-together,...

Based on Yasmine Reza’s hugely successful French play, Roman Polanski’s latest effort is a sharp satire that encompasses everything from marital strife to class values.

What starts off as a concerted effort by two sets of parents to discuss a fight between their respective offspring - the incident involved one boy striking the other with a stick and knocking out two of his teeth – spirals out of control during the course of their meeting.

The majority of the action in Carnage is set within the four walls of the Longstreet’s (played by John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) New York apartment. This is where they debate the incident that has brought the Cowans, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, to their home. The film, which lasts a breezy 80 minutes, is shot in real-time and follows the initially suppressed but eventually overwrought verbal exchanges between the two couples.

Polanski...

Roman Polanski brings together the likes of Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet for his latest movie, Carnage. But is it any good?

Carnage, an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play God Of Carnage, is Roman Polanski’s latest cinematic effort in his somewhat bizarre and tumultuous career. Having done fairly well with his last film, The Ghost, which followed the largely negative feelings for his Oliver Twist adaptation, the stakes, and hopes, for Carnage were a little higher.

The film follows an unfolding and impossibly expanding conversation between two pairs of parents, the Longstreets and the Cowans, who are brought into dialogue together due to an altercation in the playground at school between their two young sons.

Their children’s fight caused the Longstreet’s boy to lose two of his teeth, and as such, the parents get together to discuss in a civilised manner what should be done about the situation.

Chicago – Roman Polanski may not seem to be the first choice for a film about culture clashes in New York City but he has notable experience with dramas with only a few characters in a few locations (“Knife in the Water,” “Cul-de-sac,” “Death and the Maiden”). He knows how to build character tension through interaction – the games people play with words. Sadly, “Carnage” doesn’t quite deliver on the same level (or Polanski’s notable best) as the Tony Award-winning stage play but there are still elements that work here. Given the Oscar pedigree of the people who made it, one can’t be blamed for expecting a bit more from it, but there’s definite value here, particularly in a pair of great performances.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

In one of the Yasmina Reza’s greatest mistakes in adapting her own play, we actually see the incident that was only referred to...

Carnage

Directed by Roman Polanski

Written by Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza

2011, France/Germany/Spain

Roman Polanski has made his first comedy since 1972′s What?, and it’s very funny. Comedy is the easiest and the hardest genre to review. The biggest question is how many laughs does the film contain, but you have to pinpoint why it made you laugh and if the film reaches any kind of transcendence.

Carnage, adapted from Yasmina Reza’s hit play God’s of Carnage, is quite funny, and one of the better comedies of 2011. On paper, Polanski might seem like an odd choice to adapt Reza’s play (adapted by Christopher Hampton for the Brodway production) but it actually is a perfect match when you think about it. Polanski made his name in the 60′s and 70′s doing single-location films like The Tennant and Repulsion, and Carnage, with the exception of the opening and closing shots,...

Sony Pictures/Everett

“Carnage” is a comedy directed by Roman Polanski with a stellar cast, about two Brooklyn couples who meet to discuss a mishap on the playground between their children. The conversation begins civilly but slowly evolves into a satirical commentary on upper-middle-class parental warfare.

The screenplay is by Polanski and Yasmina Reza, based on the latter’s award-winning play, “God of Carnage,” which was produced on Broadway to critical acclaim. The film version stars Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet,...

Roman Polanski's Carnage is my kind of film. Cast four talented actors, throw 'em in a room, give them something to argue about, add some biting dialogue and see what happens. Played as a dark comedy, Carnage is only a comedy because life is truly funny and equally absurd, especially when you mix parents, emotions, children and alcohol and this film only gets better and better the higher tempers rise and the more alcohol gets consumed.

Yasmina Reza and Polanski adapted the script from Reza's Tony Award-winning drama "God of Carnage," which, from what I've read, is magnificent. Having never seen it I am blissfully unaware of how good it may be on stage and only have this film to go by and for my money it's worth every cent.

Set in a New York City apartment, Carnage centers on two couples whose boys have had a bit of a "disagreement" at the playground,...

Carnage

Starring Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly

Directed by Roman Polanski

Rated R

Where would we see the clashes of parenting styles imbued with the particulars of words as weapons? Only in Carnage, a Roman Polanski film. Based on the play ‘Le Dieu du carnage’ (translated to: The God of Carnage) by Yasmina Reza, who co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski, focuses on the Longstreet’s and the Cowan’s begin a civilized conversation about their children getting into a schoolyard fight and as the threads become loosened, they begin fighting with each other. No better than what they sought out to resolve, their qualms begin to get the better of them.

The film is focused on the particulars of words, their affect and the way they portray the individual into a certain light or defined characteristic. Kate Winslet is Nancy Cowan; the seemingly uptight and...

Although Christoph Waltz has been working as an actor since the early 1980’s, he was relatively unknown to American audiences before his Academy Award-winning performance as Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.” Waltz’s elevated status catapulted him into a string of Hollywood releases in 2011 that including “The Green Hornet,” “Water for Elephants” and “The Three Musketeers.” But it is Waltz’s smallest role, as Alan Cowan in Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” for which the actor is drawing his greatest acclaim since ‘Basterds.’ Based on the play by “God of Carnage” by Yasmina Reza, Waltz is Alan Cowan, a prominent attorney and the husband of Nancy (Kate Winslet). The couple is called to the house of Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) after the sons of the two couples get into a skirmish at school. The entire film takes place...

Being a parent is no easy task – when your child acts out or does something wrong, it’s hard not to take it as a personal reflection on yourself. In Carnage, after a playground altercation turns violent, the parents of the two boys involved decide to come together to try and come to a reasonable agreement on how to rectify the situation. What starts out as a civil conversation between the two parties quickly devolves into an honest and bitterly funny examination of not only each others’ parenting skills, but their marriages and even themselves as people. Based on Yasmina Reza‘s play, God of Carnage, director Roman Polanski takes the story to the big screen with four powerhouse performers who make being trapped in an apartment an engaging look at human nature you want to run away from, but at the same time are unable to tear your eyes from. After...

Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning play “God of Carnage” doesn’t inherently lend itself to cinema. With four characters interacting in a single setting, and a narrative centered on a thin symbolic conceit, it’s the sort of dialogue-heavy project that could easily be captured with a tedious cut-and-dry, shot-reverse-shot filmic approach. It’s fortunate, then, that Roman Polanski has taken it on in Carnage, and filled the roles with some of the most interesting actors around. Say what you will about Polanski the man, but Polanski the filmmaker has demonstrated an almost limitless aptitude for creative technique. Similarly, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz (four Oscar wins among them) have a preternatural gift for imbuing even the quietest moments with extraordinary, unconventional feeling. After young Zachary Cowan hits Ethan Longstreet with a stick during a playground brawl, knocking out two of Ethan’s teeth, the latter’s parents invite the former’s to...

For the month of October, New York is where it appears to be happening for cinema, as the 49th New York Film Festival gets under way. Beginning September 30, this year's slate offers features from directors such as Roman Polanski, Lars von Trier, David Cronenberg, Pedro Almodovar, the Dardenne Brothers and Alexander Payne. As with previous years, many of these films have already debuted at film festivals in Cannes, Venice and Toronto. That also makes them susceptible to piracy and I'm sorry to say that a good number of these films are already available as illegal downloads online. Let's face it, unless you're a New Yorker or true cinephile, the average moviegoer isn't going to pay out extravagant prices to see a slate of films like this. But there are some good films to be found here and although many of them have yet to be released or find distribution, I...