During the Bush administration, people would sigh and say they wished Martin Sheen’s character on The West Wing were really the president. Expect a similar response to the new political intrigue drama, The Ides of March, with its iconic liberal candidate played with cunning charm by George Clooney.

Clooney not only stars as Democratic Gov. Mike Morris, with perfectly polished talking points, but he produced, directed and co-wrote the film with his Good Night, and Good Luck collaborator Grant Heslov and with Beau Willimon, author of the off-Broadway play Farragut North, on which the movie is based.

It is a Clooney to be sure, but the main character is really Morris’s press aide, Stephen Myers (the ubiquitous Ryan Gosling), a young, savvy ferret who eats, drinks and breathes politics, yet over the course of a tough Ohio primary he learns that he may not be as smart and wily as he thinks he is.

The film’s screenplay has the taste of authenticity -- Willimon was on Howard Dean’s campaign staff during his aborted run for the White House -- even if it has little new to say beyond the obvious notions that politics is messy and fueled by treachery.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the adaptation to the screen is how well the Morris character has been integrated into the story, where he is only referred to but never seen in the play. And Clooney keeps getting better and better as a director, managing here to fill the movie with words -- even speeches -- without it ever feeling static or stagy.

He also has excellent taste in casting and knows, as perhaps only an actor can, how to get the most from his A-list performers. In addition to Gosling, there is the canny Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gosling’s boss, Morris’s campaign manager, who claims to value loyalty above all else, and Paul Giamatti as Hoffman’s opposite number on the rival staff, the guy who sets Gosling’s downward spiral in motion by inviting him for a drink, ostensibly to persuade him to jump ship and work for the other side.

Ever since the Clinton era, no political saga can be complete without an alluring intern. In this case, it is dewy-eyed Evan Rachel Wood as a well-connected coffee-toting assistant who understands her value as a sex object. Still, the film substantially softens the character compared to its stage version, turning her into more of a victim than a seductress. And then there is Marisa Tomei, as a New York Times political columnist, whose subplot succinctly captures the symbiotic antagonism betweens pols and the media.

With Gov. Morris’s speeches and town hall meeting sound bites speaking of gay marriage and redistribution of wealth, The Ides of March feels ripped from today’s headlines. Still, this is not a film that should feel dated quickly. For at its core, it is a parable on loyalty and moral codes, and you should see it.

THE IDES OF MARCH. Director: George Clooney. Cast: George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood. Rated: R. Distributor: Cross Creek Pictures. Showing: At area theaters.

Sorry, fans of superheroes and special effects, the summer is over and Hollywood is ready to bring out its A-list (for “Adult”) fare.

This is the season for films of substance, even if Tom Cruise is back with his fourth Mission: Impossible flick, director David Fincher is trying to remake a Swedish film noir into a domestic blockbuster and Martin Scorsese tries his hand at making a 3-D movie.

This is the season that most of the Academy Awards’ Best picture nominees get released, so we are willing to bet that the majority of this year’s best are listed below. After all, we’ve already seen what has opened in 2011 so far and feel certain the winner is yet to come.

The Ides of March (Oct. 7) -- George Clooney is one of the few stars who can get a serious film about the machinations of a presidential election campaign made by a studio, and fortunately Columbia Pictures said “yes” to him directing and appearing in a movie adaptation of Beau Willimon’s intricate off-Broadway play, Farragut North. It concerns a rising, though naïve media strategist (Ryan Gosling) trying to take a progressive Democratic governor (Clooney) to the White House. Call it The Best Man for a new generation.

The Skin I Live In (Oct. 14) -- Fans of the great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar would eagerly anticipate any new release from him, but particularly his first reunion with Antonio Banderas since 1990’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Banderas plays a plastic surgeon who experiments with unconventional skin grafts, and both filmmaker and star describe the results as “disturbing.” Count us in.

Anonymous (Oct. 28) -- Scholars love to debate the identity of the writer of the plays and sonnets that have been attributed to a guy named William Shakespeare. Chances are most moviegoers really do not care, but perhaps they will be drawn to this tale of Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans of Notting Hill), who may be the mind behind Hamlet and Macbeth. Curiously, this film comes from Roland Emmerich, best known for mega-action flicks like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

The Rum Diary (Oct. 28) -- Hollywood’s most bankable star, Johnny Depp, owes us all some better movies after The Tourist and the umpteenth and (please let it be the) last Pirates of the Caribbean installment. It sounds like he is back in his strength of offbeat characters here with this early novel by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, playing an expatriate American newspaper reporter on the skids in Puerto Rico. Supporting him are Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard, with direction by Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I).

Puss in Boots (Nov. 4) -- Chances are you have not spent a lot of time wondering how that rakish orange tabby from the Shrek flicks became a crook, but when it was decided that he (and voice talent Antonio Banderas) deserved his own spinoff, the screenwriting team went with an origin prequel. It seems he was hanging out with the wrong element (Humpty Dumpty, voiced by Zach Galifianakis) which led to his life of crime. Could be fun, but it sounds more like summer fare to us.

My Week with Marilyn (Nov. 4) -- That would be Marilyn Monroe, and the combative backstage story of her filming 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl with her co-star/director, Laurence Olivier. The still-underrated Michelle Williams takes on the challenge of playing iconic sex symbol Monroe and Kenneth Branagh has the almost-as-unenviable task of portraying Olivier.

J. Edgar (Nov. 9) -- Speaking of taking on real-life challenges, Leo DiCaprio tackles the larger-than-life role of J. Edgar Hoover, who helped found the FBI, then ran it for nearly half a century, nabbing crooks and making enemies along the way. Clint Eastwood instigated the film, which usually means Oscar nominations all around. And yes, Hoover’s sexual orientation is examined, which probably means DiCaprio gets to wear a dress.

Hugo (Nov. 23) -- We were starting to think -- or maybe just hope -- that the 3-D revival was waning, but then we heard that Martin Scorsese was jumping on that gimmick bandwagon. He applies the extra dimension to a story about an orphan who is helped deal with his grief by a robot left to him by his late father. Yes, it sounds like an after-school special to us too, but we have learned never to underestimate Scorsese.

The Descendants (Nov. 23) -- Speaking of favorite directors, it has been seven years since Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt) last released a feature film, the Oscar-nominated Sideways. Since his new one stars George Clooney as a Hawaiian real estate magnate, it seems likely that he will draw his largest audience yet. Especially if Clooney’s fans overlook the likely downbeat premise of him dealing with his wife going into a coma.

Young Adult (Dec. 9) -- Charlize Theron plays an author of teen novels who is emotional stuck back in high school, and when she hears that her old boyfriend is married and just had a child, she flies to her hometown to win him back. OK, not that interesting a premise, but factor in that it comes from director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody -- the team that gave us Juno -- and the film graduates to the must-see list.

A Dangerous Method (Dec. 9) -- Another reunion worth looking forward to is the latest collaboration of director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises) in a biographical tale of pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Specifically, it concerns his friendship with psychiatrist colleague Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), which dissolves over -- what else? -- a woman (Keira Knightley).

The Iron Lady (Dec. 16) -- Yes, it is months until the Oscars, but the buzz has already begun for Meryl Streep’s latest transformation into former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who led her nation with a conservative iron hand in the 1980s. True, that was eons ago for many moviegoers, but if they can stand a little education along with an object lesson in acting, this one has got to be worth a look. Streep reunites with her Mamma Mia! director, Phyllida Lloyd.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Dec. 21) -- The Swedish-made trilogy adapted from Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novels about a Goth computer hacker and a crusading journalist who team up to fight crime were hugely successful with the art film crowd, but that is a small fraction of the movie-going public. So now comes David Fincher (Benjamin Button, The Social Network) to remake them, with a cast headed by Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Nothing in this movie season is more anticipated and more dreaded.

Extremely Loud and Extremely Close (Dec. 25) -- Coming close on the heels of the 10^th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks is this adaptation of a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated) about a young boy’s search for the lock that fits the curious key left to him by his father, who died in the Twin Towers that fateful day. Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock head the cast, directed by Stephen Daldry, whose films are usually Oscar bait.

War Horse (Dec. 28) -- It figures that Steven Spielberg would be attracted to Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book about a British lad and his beloved, rundown horse Joey, who both enlist in the army during World War I. The story has all the emotion and sentimentality on which the name-brand director has built his reputation. Before it was a movie, though, it was an imaginative stage production with life-sized puppets for the horses. Of course, Spielberg used real horses. Those who saw the play cannot imagine it being effective that way, those who never saw the play cannot imagine it without horses.

Carnage (late December) -- Also coming from the theater is Yasmina Reza’s comedy of ill manners (originally called God of Carnage), about two sets of parents who meet and try to remain civil and adult getting to the bottom of a playground altercation between their nine-year-old sons. Of course, they fail miserably and their childish behavior leads to most of the fun. The four juicy roles have gone to Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz. Roman Polanski directs, which means the Brooklyn location will be played by somewhere outside the country.

We’ve barely been introduced to Peter O’Neill (Aden Young), the patriarch of a family of six in rural Australia, before a heart attack strikes him dead behind the wheel of his truck.

With his daughter playfully atop the vessel, and assuming her father is simply having some fun, the truck careens slowly off the road and teeters, with an anticlimactic thump, into the enormous fig tree adjacent to the family’s mobile home.

Like the beginning of a Six Feet Under episode, and to director Julie Bertuccelli’s great credit, the event is presented with restrained, dispassionate observation – the first sign that The Tree won’t be a film that settles for treacly melodrama. As emotions of mirth give way to panic and finally dread on the faces of Peter’s children, we understand that a half-dozen lives have changed, irrevocably, in an instant. What heretofore has been a sun-baked, ambling look at family’s relocation into a new environment becomes a bountiful study of grief, coping and hope in the wake of sudden tragedy.

The Tree is not a film of tear-stained funerals and long conversations about the sanctity and fragility of life. For a postmortem while, Bertuccelli lingers, perhaps a bit too heavily, on the loaded symbolism of wilted flowers, empty cowboy hats and sympathy cards that clutter the O’Neill’s abode, but the more the time transpires in the household, the more of an understanding we gain of the film’s dual (and sometimes dueling) protagonists: 8-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies, astounding in just her second screen role) and her mother Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg, the French chanteuse subdued in a wearied, appropriately numbed performance).

Simone deals with the film’s tragic events by taking refuge in the branches of that giant fig, where she believes her father is communicating with her through the susurrus of wind on its protracted branches. Skeptical at first, Dawn too finds comfort atop the tree, discussing her problems to her late husband in an act that justifiably strikes the neighbors as absurd.

When the tree, which begins to grow in unpredictable directions, punctures the O’Neill’s windows and invades their home, it’s as much a sign of Peter reaching out as the appearance of animals – a bat swooping toward a hanging light, frogs emerging from the toilet – that materialize inside like opaque messengers.

As Dawn moves beyond the past and forges a relationship with a scruffy local plumber (Marton Csokas, resembling a pleasant Dr. House), Peter remains a somewhat central character, especially if you subscribe to Eastern religions and dabble in pantheism. As The Tree takes on the grammar of a fable, the possibility of reincarnation is everywhere you look; even the owls and parrots Bertuccelli decides to show us take on an added spiritual dimension.

Then again, it all could be nothing. Never slip-sliding into mystical mumbo-jumbo, The Three shows us nothing beyond the physical; interpretations of transcendence lie with the viewer. It’s a more ambitious and sweeping film than Bertuccelli’s low-key feature debut, the Italian-language Since Otar Left, but emotionally the films are cut from the same cloth: Both analyze the lives of others following the death of one.

Critics have been spotting parallels with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life that are not entirely off-base, thanks to its similar title and nature-centric cinematographic beauty. Lacking formal pretense and aesthetic rigor, The Tree is a far more accessible venture, neither as daunting nor as unforgettable as Malick’s life-expanding tone poem.

But for most audiences, this is the better film and will remain one of the year’s most enriching movies for grown-ups.

THE TREE. Director: Julie Bertuccelli; Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Morgana Davies, Marton Csokas, Penne Hackforth-Jones, Aden Young; Distributor: Zeitgeist; Rating: NR;

Playing now at Movies of Delray, Movies of Lake Worth, Living Room Theaters at FAU and Cinema Paradiso.

The idea of a comedy about cancer is hardly unheard of. After all, the cable series The Big C is based on exactly that premise. But the very savvy new film 50/50 -- named for the odds of surviving the cancer that young NPR radio segment producer Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) contracts -- handles the precarious tonal balancing act with impressive ease.

The film is written by cancer survivor Will Reiser (former Da Ali G Show staffer), a good friend of Seth Rogen, who encouraged him to exploit his experiences.

Rogen is one of the producers of the film, who cast himself as Adam’s raucous buddy. He comes close to sinking the project with his overly broad performance style, but to the credit of Reiser’s screenplay and to the deft touch of director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness), 50/50 is an assured comic vehicle. It occasionally grabs us by the throat with emotional resonances, yet never spills over into the expected morass of sentimentality.

Adam is only 27 when he develops a backache whose cause is a malignant tumor that has him envisioning his demise. But to his buddy Kyle (Rogen), who accepts the job of cheering Adam up, cancer can be a babe magnet if mentioned deftly in the right watering holes. After all, Adam’s toxic girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), a bad match under the best of conditions, quickly disappeared from the scene once she learned of his medical condition

50/50 even manages to find humor in chemotherapy, as Adam learns coping skills from two veterans of the treatment (Philip Baker Hall, Matt Frewer). And thanks to some shrewd line readings, Anjelica Huston steals the scenes she is in, playing Adam’s overbearing mother who already has a dementia-addled husband in tow.

And while psychotherapy can be a stale source of sitcom humor, it is refreshed by the likes of Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) as a hospital-assigned therapist-in-training. In over her head, her every gesture of comfort feels studied, exposing her inexperience all the more, and she soon starts to have romantic feelings for Adam.

Even in the company of these canny supporting players, Gordon-Levitt manages to maintain the attention of the film’s center, with his sorrowful eyes and hangdog demeanor. In films from The Lookout to (500) Days of Summer to 50/50, he has established himself as a versatile actor to be reckoned with.

With its subject matter, 50/50 is a textbook hard-sell film with an instant turn-off factor. But get past your disease-of-the-week film prejudices and see this crafty comic take on learning to live in the face of death.

50/50. Director: Jonathan Levine. Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Houston, Bryce Dallas Howard. Distributor: Summit Entertainment. Rating: R. Now playing at area theaters.

You could never accuse Anna Kendrick of avoiding offbeat projects.

She copped an Oscar nomination two years ago as the cold-blooded tech geek in Up in the Air, a comedy about corporate downsizing. In 2007, she co-starred in a high school debate team tale with the off-putting title of Rocket Science. And this Friday she plays a novice therapist in the cancer comedy, 50/50.

A cancer comedy?

“This certainly wasn’t what I expected to do right after ‘Up in the Air,’” says the petite Kendrick, 27. “It was very inconvenient to fall in love with the script where when you describe it, it sounds a little tricky. It would have been a lot easier if I didn’t like it.”

A lot of scripts came Kendrick’s way after the success of Up in the Air, but they were all for similar characters. “I got a lot of offers to play heartless, uptight, ambitious characters,” she says. Katherine, the inept therapist in 50/50, “was interesting because she is so vulnerable. She has such a big heart and gets in her own way by kind of over- thinking things. But it’s only because she cares so much.

“Katherine’s sort of sweet and endearing, because she’s such a mess,” Kendrick adds. “All her emotions are like right on the surface. She’s got the thinnest layer of confidence of anyone.”

50/50 is written by Will Reiser, who got his start on Da Ali G Show, and who did contract a rare cancer while he was in his 20s. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the central character based on Reiser, and Reiser’s close friend Seth Rogen plays a sidekick based on himself. Kendrick’s Katherine, however, is a fictional invention, which gave her a great deal of latitude in developing her.

“I really got to build the character from the ground up,” she explains. “We felt like this was a girl who her friends always came to her for advice. She’s a great listener, and she thought, ‘Great, I’ll be good at this,’ but right now she’s just not trusting her instincts. She’s getting in her own way. She’s too in her head.”

The film is directed by Jonathan Levine (who made the critically admired, but little seen The Wackness three years ago). He mentioned to Kendrick that he cast her based on her performance in Rocket Science, which also has a small, but avid following.

“I feel like most filmmakers that hire me have seen ‘Rocket Science,’ which no one in the real world saw,” Kendrick says. “Lucky for me, lots of artsy-fartsy director types saw it, like Jonathan.”

Actually, she sees Levine as more of an evil genius. “He makes you feel like you’re doing so well that he doesn’t have to bother you,” she says. “He makes you feel like you’re making his job really easy. Meanwhile, he’s making sure he gets exactly what he wants from each of us.”

Kendrick began in the theater, having the distinction at 12 of being the second youngest performer to ever earn a Tony Award nomination (for 1998’s High Society). As a stage performer, she is used to a rehearsal period, something she has learned to do without while making movies.

“It was crazy,” she says of the minimal prep time on 50/50. “I knew Joe (Gordon-Levitt) for maybe 17 minutes before we did our first scene together, that was pretty well into the story.”

Still, as filming continued, Kendrick began to sense that this could be an exceptional project. “I felt like something very special was happening. But then you get in your head and you think, ‘Well, if the dailies are good, maybe the movie won’t be.’ I just tried not to jinx it.”

She first saw 50/50 with an audience at the Toronto International Film Festival and was taken aback by the laughter it generated. “It’s honestly even funnier than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be quiet, dark humor, and it’s really joyful, so open and so full of life,” Kendrick beams.

“I knew it would be good, but I thought it could be one of those messed-up things that a couple of people in the world really love. I guess I underestimated how relatable it is, to try and laugh through something difficult.”

Even if 50/50 does not live up to the buzz that surrounds it, Kendrick has four other movies in post-production. Not the least on them is the fourth installment of the Twilight franchise, Breaking Dawn, due out in mid-November. But do not expect her to reveal much about what is in that movie.

“It’s probably better that I don’t,” she says sheepishly. “Listen, there’s a book, so everybody already knows what happens, but I still feel like I’m going to have my tongue cut out if I say the wrong thing.”

Then there’s a cop drama called End of Watch, an ensemble comedy (What to Expect When You’re Expecting) and something titled Rapturepalooza.

“Oh my God, that movie is crazy,” Kendrick gasps. “Craig Robinson plays the Anti-Christ and he decides that we should get married. I realized the other day I think I’m trying to kill my grandmother by being in that movie. She can never know that I’m in it.”

Something tells us that keeping any movie with Kendrick under the radar -- even from her grandmother -- is going to be very difficult from here on.