Talking Trailers: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Blue is the Warmest Colour and The Family

Emily Leahy rounds up the latest releases. This week: fangirling Jennifer Lawrence, gold-winning lesbians and Scarface in rural France.

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

21 Nov

The second film adaptation of the bestselling novel series has been hotly anticipated. The trailer blasts out with all the exotic locations, special effects and emotional toil that will only achieve its full aesthetic potential on screen, preferably of the more expensive 3D variety. So, essentially, you are immediately drawn to the big budget. But that’s not what I’m looking forward to, (although the dress that turns into a mocking-jay looks pretty impressive), because Jennifer Lawrence is guaranteed to give a good performance. As she faces the far more challenging political game of the outside world Lawrence will enact the complicated bad-assness that is Katniss, and we’ll love it.

2. Blue is the Warmest Colour

22 Nov

The trailer is very minimalistic, reflecting the intense and poignant tone of this unconventional love story. Depicting the relationship between two women, one a lesbian, the other an inexperienced girl, the film has already won the hearts and votes of the critics. It’s the first film where both actresses and the director have won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the trailer flashes short quotes of praise, suggesting the film is more than a cliché of French ‘amore’. On further reading, the trailer perhaps focuses more on the innocence of their relationship, whilst the film apparently contains a fair amount of explicit lesbian sex. So, maybe not one to watch on a whim.

Read our verdict on Blue is the Warmest Colour at the London Film Festival here.

3. The Family

22 Nov

De Niro is creating a bridge between his two go-to characters: a Scorsese gritty vigilante and an aging father of questionable morality and wit. In this Scorsese-produced film, he’s a mob-father. Despite a stellar cast of Academy Award winners (Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones also star), the film looks like a plot of stereotypes on steroids. The family is made up of sociopaths, cheats and arsonists. They have to relocate to rural France, where they are tracked down by a merry bunch of gun-touting mafia men. Seriously, they might as well be armed with splurge guns and break into a rousing number of ‘Fat Sam’s Grand Slam’. It might prove to be the film of the year. But then again it might not.

Emily Leahy

What will  you be going to see this week? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

BFI LFF Review: Enough Said

TV lost one of its all-time greats this year, but Screen Editor Rob Harris finds Enough Said a smart, witty tribute to James Gandolfini.

Billed as one as James Gandolfini’s last undertakings into film before his untimely death back in June, Nicole Holofcener’s latest endeavour immediately stands out as one of the best comedies of the year.

Image credit: BFI

By taking a refreshingly mature approach to the traditional rom-com formula, it stands as a prime example of how a film should handle the seriousness of a relationship without neglecting the all-important laughs. And boy, there are laughs.

After meeting at a ritzy middle-aged party, Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a divorced physical therapist, forms a relationship with Albert (Gandolfini), a slobbish but deeply kind and humorous giant of a man. As the two become closer, the relationship is gradually poisoned by Marianne (Catherine Keener), one of Eva’s clients and awkwardly for her, Albert’s ex-wife.

As the plot progresses and she is fed more and more stories about her boyfriend from the unknowing Marianne, Eva soon becomes locked in an internal struggle as she tries to balance Albert’s good and bad qualities without him or his former wife finding out about her connection between the old couple.

Usually, declaring the movie’s humour as ‘adult’ throws up connotations of nudity, swearing and cringe-inducing sex jokes, Enough Said brings it back to reality by tackling a multitude of very real issues.

From the stress of divorce to their kids leaving home and going to college, these genuine moments engage superbly with the sincerity displayed by the film’s two leads, generating witty but never tiresome dialogue as well as a relationship just as believable and warm as any you would find in the real world.

Whilst the usual rom-com tropes may prevent some from enjoying the flick as a full-fledged comedy, Enough Said does more than enough to keep you entertained from start to finish and definitely warrants more than just one viewing.

Rob Harris, Screen Editor

Are rom-coms smarter than ever? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

BFI LFF Review: Kill Your Darlings

Has Daniel Radcliffe finally beaten his Harry Potter typecast? Rob Harris, Screen Editor reviews his latest effort, Kill Your Darlings.

Ever since the Harry Potter film series was put to rest, Daniel Radcliffe has tried his best to escape forever being labelled as ‘the boy who lived’. Whilst his parts in The Woman in Black and the Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying did well to help distance himself from the franchise, no single role has managed to help him rise above the legacy of his earlier career. Thankfully, John Krokidas’ directorial debut may have finally put those gremlins to rest.

Following the early college years of American poet Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe), the film covers the rise of the original circle of writers responsible for the Beat Generation in their efforts to start what they believed would be the next literary renaissance.

Based on real-life events, the story soon departs from the world of writing to one of murder and forbidden love as Ginsberg’s friend and love interest Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) is imprisoned over the murder of former lover David Kemmerer (Michael C. Hall).

Image Credit: BFI

With Radcliffe presenting the audience with a considered and powerful performance, the movie is in no way weighed down by the pervading spectre of Harry Potter (even despite the fact he’s sporting a fetching pair of circular glasses). However, even in light of strong showings from the rest of the cast, there is still the general sense that the over-romanticising of every aspect of the Beat Generation prevents Kill Your Darlings from truly realising its full potential. By not allowing any real downtime between the partying, drinking, drugs and turbulent relationships that the script holds so dear, it does at times come across as too overly dramatic.

That said, beyond the perceived melodrama, the relationships between the characters do maintain a definite believability, with each passing event straining and evolving who they are as people.

Ginsberg in particular soon becomes a phantom of his former self. Starting the movie as a mild-mannered, yet free thinking introvert, his transition into a radical poet, as he allows his dealings with Carr and the rest of the group to envelope and alter his personality, is approached with enough care as to not seem too jarring a change by the time the credits roll.

As a generally entertaining insight into the wild beginnings of Ginsberg’s career, this is one story that should not be so hastily overlooked.

Rob Harris, Screen Editor

Will Daniel ever be more than ‘the boy who lived’? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

BFI LFF Review: Don Jon

Screen Editor, Megan Furborough, finds Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be a many trick pony in Don Jon

Joseph Gordon Levitt’s directorial debut of a New Jersey lothario with a porn addiction is a smart, funny and surprisingly heart-warming story. This film is clearly a labour of love, and the passion that director, writer and star Gordon-Levitt has put into it is evident in the sharp directing and clever dialogue.

Image Credit: BFI

Gordon-Levitt is the titular Jon, who only cares about a few things in life – his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, and his porn. Such is the complex character of Jon, dubbed ‘Don’ by his two “boys” due to his success with women at the nightclub he frequents.

The only issue is that he can’t lose himself in sex with real women (it seems like a lot of hard work without much pay-off) – so the internet’s vast porn resources come in, an addiction that means only the chime of an Apple Mac turning on to get him going. He dutifully confesses his sins on Sunday, does his hail Marys and walks away only to start it all over again

Montages of the club, masturbation and confession scenes were clever, and clearly show the relentless cycle of Jon’s life under the grip of unconscious addiction.

That is until he meets Barbara (Johansson), a brassy New-Jersey blonde who is seemingly the woman of his dreams.

But in the same way that Jon’s porn gives him unrealistic expectations of women, a scene where Jon and Barbara go to the cinema – which contains a movie (starring Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway) within the movie, and is one of the funniest moments – shows the unrealistic expectations Hollywood romcoms advocate in their tales of ‘true’ love.

Both formats are as false as the other – “Movies and porn are different, Jon. They give awards for movies,” Barbara says. “They give awards for porn too,” Jon fires back. He wants Barbara to be the submitting woman of his fantasties; she wants Jon to be The Man of her movies, making him go to night school and give up doing his own cleaning.

It’s not until Jon meets Esther (Moore), a classmate at night school, that this all changes.

Gordon-Levitt replaces the search for love with the search for acceptance, and despite the slightly awkward interaction between Moore and Gordon-Levitt, the ending of the film is heartfelt and sweet with Jon finally finding the kind of acceptance he was looking for all along.

Whilst Don Jon may not pull off its feminist sub-tones as well as it intends, this is a fun and likable film with a fantastic cast – and shows great promise for Gordon-Levitt’s future in directing.

Was Don Jon a triumph or should JGL stick to acting? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting or rating below

BFI LFF Review: Blue is the Warmest Colour

Screen Editor, Megan Furborough falls head over heels for Blue is the Warmest Colour.

“It’s all or nothing with you” Emma (Seydoux) laughingly tells Adèle (Exarchopoulos) at one early moment in the film. With this sentiment in mind, Kerchiche’s demanding three hour film requires your complete investment or you risk the complex beauty of this stunning film passing you by – and that’s not a chance you should take with Blue is the Warmest Colour.

One of the few non ‘widescreen close-up’ shots
Image Credit: BFI

Blue is very much the story of Adèle and Emma, and the rest of the cast, although excellent, merely circulate around this phenomenal central pairing. Adèle meets university art-student Emma when she is 17, still at school, and in the moment of flux between childhood and adulthood when everything seems both possible and futile.

This is a coming of age story, as well as a coming out story, and the audience closely follows Adèle through the beginning of their relationship, to the tentative first steps of jobs and living together, to the – perhaps inevitable – break up.

There are a lot of clashes in this film. Emma is older, a middle-class student of art history and philosophy, whose family is entirely comfortable with her sexuality. Adèle is poorer, has aspirations of becoming a teacher and has to hide her relationship after she is ridiculed and spat at when her friends find out. But the clashes are coupled with an intense focus on pleasure: art, literature, eating and, of course, sex.

With Seydoux and Exarchopoulos claiming the central ten minute sex scene took days to film with Kerchiche making them fight and hit each other again and again, it’s no wonder that these scenes have been the centre of great debate.

‘Beatifully intimate’
Image Credit: BFI

Critics have lauded them pornographic, but I would argue that the sex was dealt the same level of detail and scrutiny that every other emotion was shown in the film. These scenes show Adèle’s growth – she has gone from an awkward teenager constantly playing with her hair to a woman in full control of and enjoying her sexuality.

Blue is beautifully intimate in that it shows what isn’t beautiful. When Adèle cries snot runs down her nose and mascara streams down her face, spaghetti is noisily slurped as characters chew with open mouths and as Emma and Adèle kiss, beads of saliva hang between their lips – at times it seems to be so real that I felt like an intruder on their relationship, particularly as it is filmed almost entirely in widescreen close-ups.

During the ten years that the story takes place, Adèle’s emotional highs and lows are anchored in her expressions. They tell the audience everything there is to say about being in love by actually saying very little ,and despite the explicit sex scenes the most prominent bit of flesh on display is her heart.

Blue is the Warmest Colour is a story about love, from the thrill of first glances and first kisses to the bitterness, sadness and lingering affection that remains when that feeling dies. Like any great love story, this near-perfect film will leave a lingering stain on your heart.

Have you seen Blue is the Warmest Colour? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting or rating below

BFI LFF Review: 1

Rob Harris, Screen Editor looks back at one of the hidden gems of the LFF: a factual little brother to the blockbusting Rush.

Image credit: BFI

Rush may have been and gone, but this year’s BFI London Film Festival certainly had something to whet the appetites of Formula 1 fans and Chris Hemsworth aficionados alike.

Tucked away in a sparsely occupied cinema screen, Paul Crowder’s 1 has done more than enough to show that documentaries can be just as thrilling as their big-budget Hollywood counterparts.

Following the sport since tyres first touched-ground at Silverstone back in 1950, the film looks back on the evolution of F1 as the cars became faster, the drivers more eccentric, and the fans louder.

However, as the 60s and 70s hit, it soon turned out that despite its explosive popularity, it was a career choice defined by the archaic ways of a post-war world yet to fully comprehend the dangers of racing.

From Jochen Rindt to the Ayrton Senna, the electrifying personalities of the drivers who lit up the tracks and papers of the time are expressed in a captivatingly detailed manner, filling the viewer in on every detail of their lives on and off the circuit.

Image credit: BFI

Rare archival footage combined with interviews with an impressive range of legends and innovators centres the film well and truly on Formula 1 not only as entertainment, but as a thriving culture.

However, as every segment probes deeper into what makes these racers tick, it is nearly always derailed by the abrupt death of each man on screen. The immediacy of these instances, whilst done perhaps too regularly, succeed in juxtaposing the insane, adrenaline-fuelled highs ofdexterity and victory with story after story of these very public, yet crushingly personal tragedies.

Whilst it may alienate some as it gets more bogged down in the details of improving safety and infrastructure, for the most part, 1 is a fantastically realised documentary with an obvious passion for the sport.

It may not reach the lofty heights of Senna, but for anyone with at least a passing interest in Formula 1, this is definitely a film worth giving up two hours for.

Rob Harris, Screen Editor

Will you be seeing 1 on its general release? Tell us why on Facebook, Twitter or by commenting below.

BFI LFF Review: Grigris

There are many things you might categorise Grigris as. An economic allegory? A fable of paternal abandonment? A Chadian Saturday Night Fever?

Image credit: image.net

A joint French-Chadian production helmed by the acclaimed Mahamet-Saleh Haroun (Bye-Bye Africa, A Screaming Man), Grigris has the multiplicity to carry all these things and more. Seen from the expressive eyes of the titular Grigris (Souleymane Démé), in one aspect, the film follows his attempts to become a dancer, despite a paralysed leg.

But in quite another, it’s a dark story of co-dependence. Outside the colourful club where Grigris is king, he’s subject to intense vulnerability. And when his step-father falls ill and medical bills roll in, Grigris is forced to start petrol smuggling in order to pay them.

Along the way, he meets the beautiful Mimi, whose own dream of becoming a model is failing to materialise, leading her to quite literally transform herself every night (wig and makeup – check), and turn tricks.

Image credit: image.net

In short, Haroun’s central characters are disfigured by the pressures put upon them. And most interestingly, its semi-retribution comes not from success but from belonging, and the strength of familial, particularly paternal bonds.

Despite minimal dialogue, in Grigris gesture speaks volumes: a wave to a mother, a kiss on the shoulder, a wife lying by her dying husband. As if it would be immodest to do so, emotions go unarticulated, whilst ordinary talk – money, work and chores, take over. Emotions are sanctified, just like the empty stage where Grigris creates his juddering routines.

It’s this ability to say everything and nothing that makes Grigris remarkable. From its beautifully shot landscapes to its chiaroscuro shadows, the camera evokes more than needs to be stated. A tale of equal strength and weakness, bravery and apathy, and literal paralysis, Grigris truly needs to be seen to be appreciated.

4/5

Jess O’Kane, Online Editor

Ten Things We've Learnt from LFF So Far

1. You can’t be a player without a mocha. You just can’t.
2. First one to tweet their thoughts is the winner. GO.

   

   The Odeon Leicester Square, site of many lessons.
   Image credit: Odeon

3. Watching film journalists trying to pick a cinema seat is like watching Maggie Smith play anything, i.e variations of disdain.
4. No one hates Tom Hanks. Grumpy cat smiles when Forrest Gump comes on TV.
5. “There are loads of people here with similar interests to me. I know, I’ll sit in the corner with my macbook and go on reddit!”
6. Wearing your press pass while striding about in public literally feels like you and the world just fist-pumped.
7. The phenomenon of seat smugness: Oh, you’re late to the screening? That’s a shame. Cause I got here an hour ago and I’m sitting BACK CENTRE bitch.
8. People with curly or obtrusive hair are to be avoided at all costs. They are not your friends.
9. Ew. Who would want a polystyrene cup full of watery tea? Oh it’s free?! COME HITHER, SWEET NECTAR.
10. Only badasses wear scarves. Chunky knit = big in the game.

BFI LFF Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

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At a smoky Greenwich Village joint called the Gaslight Cafe in 1961, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) croons a soulful ballad. “Hang me, oh hang me,” he pleads, “I’ll be dead and gone.” Such is the rhetoric of Inside Llewyn Davis, a film more sweetly tragic than perhaps any yet in the Coen Brothers canon.

Image credit: BFI

Described by Ethan Coen as an “odyssey”, Inside Llewyn Davis follows the winding path of the titular folk singer Llewyn Davis, a man for whom impeccable facial hair is the only apparent comfort.

Loathed by his ex-lover Jean (Carey Mulligan), who calls him the “idiot brother of King Midas”, and rejected by manipulative agents and record execs alike, Llewyn finds himself skipping from couch to couch, barely able to survive in the bitter New York winter.

In a trajectory reminiscent of Barton Fink, things escalate when Davis loses the marmalade cat of a bourgeois couple who lend him their couch and a plate of moussaka for the night. A few hours later, he learns that Jean is pregnant, and that he’ll be paying for the abortion.

Paralysed by indecision, Llewyn turns to what he knows – the military, his ex-marine father, his sister – and finds them staring blankly back.

Carey Mulligan as Jean.
Image credit: BFI

Impossible though his situation may be, Inside Llewyn Davis is not a defeatist film. It’s peppered with blackly comic performances, from Carey Mulligan’s irate Jean, to John Goodman as a hulking, thoroughly unpleasant jazz musician. Its tragedy comes in the form of powerlessness, firstly against the music industry, and therefore with that most folk of enemies – society in general.

Giving rhyme to the protest is, of course, the music. T Bone Burnett’s arrangements are given unprecedented screen time – so much so it makes O Brother Where Art Thou?  seem vaguely quiet. The songs are beautiful, but as the film progresses they begin to sound increasingly futile, like cries in the dark. In one scene, Llewyn goes to visit his senile father in a nursing home, and sings him an emotive ballad. He simply turns away.

Just as the music turns back in on itself, Llewyn’s narrative begins to circle around the plug hole, winding back via trauma and Greyhound buses. If Inside Llewyn Davis is an odyssey, it represents a failed one. Bittersweet, intelligent and witty, its absolute achievement is to spare the melodrama, and to instead allow for that raw impulse to take over – hot, unfathomable injustice.

5/5

Jess O’Kane, Online Editor

Preview: BFI London Film Festival 2013

From the 12th-14th of October, Exeposé Screen will be at the 57th BFI London Film Festival, bringing you news and reviews from one of the largest and most diverse film events in the world.

But before we set off, here’s our preview of the festival highlights.

[divider]

Blue is the Warmest Colour

From French Director Abdellatif Kechiche (L’Esquive, Couscous), Blue is the Warmest Colour is a tale of messy love and uninhibited passion – and a refreshingly demystified portrayal of a lesbian relationship. Charting several years in the life of Adèle Exarchopoulos, the film follows her development from a young student to a woman embroiled in an intense relationship with the blue-haired Emma (Léa Seydoux). The film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, and is sure to have people talking.

 

We Are the Best!

Swedish favourite Lukas Moodysson returns to heartfelt form with this sensitive bildungsroman, centering on three young girls determined to start a punk band in early-80s Stockholm. Moodysson rose to fame with the similarly bittersweet Show Me Love and Together, which first showcased his generous eye and ability to coax strong performances out of inexperienced actors. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the three young leads of We Are the Best! have been widely lauded, and the film is almost certain be a showstopper.

 

The Double

Britcom royalty Richard Ayoade directs his second feature The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg as a downtrodden office employee who’s colleagues see straight through him, most especially the girl of his dreams – Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). But when his exact double starts working in the same office, things go from bad to worse. He watches as an ambitious and confident version of himself wins over Hannah’s affection and the respect of his co-workers. Executed in Ayoade’s typically tragicomic style, The Double promises to bring the director to a global audience.

 

Inside Llewyn Davis

The hotly anticipated new release from the Coen Brothers sees Drive co-stars Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac reunited in this tale of one downtrodden musician trying to earn a crust in Greenwich Village. Llewyn (Isaac) makes for a classically charming yet pitiful Coen protagonist, maneuvering professional stagnation and personal woes. Mulligan stars as his songstress fling Jean, who’s unexpected pregnancy ruptures his dreamy existence. Featuring guest roles from Justin Timberlake and John Goodman, this is one not to miss.

 

As I Lay Dying

James Franco’s latest directorial outing sees the notoriously academic actor adapting a suitably dark, twisting American classic. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying provides multiple perspectives on a family of Southern farmers making a journey to bury their dead mother, and is written in a typically dense, multi-faceted style. Impressively, Franco manages to transfer those subtleties to screen, calling upon a stellar cast and a sensitive script.