Possible Worlds Film Festival: It Felt Like Love (2013)

Year: 2013
Running Time: 82 minutes
Director: Eliza Hittman
Writer: Eliza Hittman
Cast: Gina Piersanti, Giovanna Salimeni, Ronen Rubenstein

It Felt Like Love will be screening at the  2013 Possible Worlds Festival of American & Canadian Film at 6:30 on the 17th of August 2013 at the Dendy Opera Quays. For information on tickets, please see here

While a visually beautiful film with incredible cinematography, It Felt Like Love is extremely confronting and often uncomfortable to watch. However, the way it springs your mind into action afterwards in worth the unsettlement you feel.

The all too familiar issue of girls wanting to grow up too fast is brought to the forefront in Eliza Hittman's debut feature film. It is almost an assault on your emotions as you painfully watch while innocence is destroyed in a brutally sexually confronting fashion. While feeling uneasy about the subject matter, there are some incredibly beautiful landscape shots which provides a calming aspect to the film.

Fourteen year old Lila (Gina Piersanti) is lonely and awkward within herself during a Brooklyn summer. As she see's those around her having romantic ventures, she longs to have that herself. When she meets an older thug at the beach, she invents a sexual history for herself to make herself seem more mature and experienced which leads to her landing herself in a vulnerable and dangerous situation.

Although very confronting and often uncomfortable, It Felt Like Love has so many layers that challenge you to rethink they way you thought about certain issues such as the destruction of innocence. In a world where people are quick to point out what the things that celebrities do that make them a bad role model to children, maybe there really is a lot more to it than that. Lila wants to grow up quickly for many reasons and not one of them is to be like her favourite singer or actress. She is a lonely girl who wants the same company that she see's other people around her have. She is quite obviously bored at home by herself and wants to be out with other people and she finds that inventing this history is a way to keep people interested in her. It also doesn't help that her best friend is older and exploring sexual territory, which she openly shares the details with Lila about. Lila, being younger and wanting to fit in, mimics Chiara's (played by Giovanna Salimeni) words and actions as younger people to do those they look up to.  In saying this, Lila is still so young and innocent that she doesn't completely understand what Chiara is saying or the complexity of it. It Felt Like Love encourages us to ponder what really destroys innocence. Is it external influences such as people like Rihanna or Miley Cyrus, or those around us, or is it more a cause of internal issues such as loneliness and wanting to become someone else?

The cinematography of the film is breathtaking. It takes you on a journey of the outer areas of Brooklyn and New York that are not normally shown on screen and makes that area of the world almost unrecognisable. The scene in the marshes is very impressive and as said before, makes you forget the intensity of the issues and instantly calms you. The shots at the beach are also quite beautiful. The ferris wheel scene is also wonderfully filmed and intriguing to watch.

The first shot of Gina Piersanti as Lila is so memorable and absolutely perfect. Her face tells a million stories and you learn more about her character just from this facial expression than you learn from other characters over a whole film. You instantly know how lonely and awkward this girl is and her face begs you to feel for her and be her friend. Piersanti is just wonderful in the whole film, but it is the first minute of her that leaves the biggest impression on you.


It Felt Like Love is incredibly powerful. So powerful when it comes to the corruption of innocence in girls that many people may not enjoy being so unsettled during the film. Yet, it is a real beauty in the way it subliminally approaches current society issues and the visuals are exquisite.

7.5/10



The Possible Worlds Festival of American & Canadian Cinema will run from the 8th-18th of August 2013 at Dendy Opera Quays and Dendy Newtown in Sydney. Please see the official website for more details.

Paranoia (2013)

 

 
 


Year: 2013
Running Time: 106 minutes
Director: Robert Luketic
Writers: Jason Hall and Barry L. Levy
Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard, Lucas Till, Richard Dreyfuss

Paranoia will open in Australian cinemas on the 5th of September 2013 and is distributed by Icon Films.
Opens in the United States on the 16th of August 2013.

 Paranoia is what one would call a run of the mill thriller. It's got everything a typical thriller has, which is it's main failing point. It is absolutely nothing new as it just tries too hard to be like it's peers.

The type of film which you can tell would have looked a lot better on paper than it does on screen, Paranoia is a lack-lustre and unoriginal film with equally lack-lustre and unoriginal characters. There are some interesting enough twists, but none that are mind blowing enough to make the film a success. It's tries so hard to be a coming of age thriller, but it just seems confused as to whether it is a young adult film or whether it is a grown up film.

Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) is a twenty-seven year old entry level employee who feels like he is on the brink of his career breakthrough, when he and his friends are fired when he challenges his billionaire boss, Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and then uses his credit card on a boozy night out. Rather than pressing charges against Adam, Wyatt gives him the opportunity to earn more money than he ever thought possible and allow his friends to get their old jobs back by going undercover at Wyatt's archenemy's, Jock Goddard's company and gathering his secrets. What begins as an amazing opportunity for Adam to experience how the other half lives, becomes a dangerous game in which Adam must fight for his life and the lives of those he loves.

It is easy to see how the screenplay, written by Jason Hall and Barry L. Levy and based on the novel by Joseph Finder would have looked like a winner on paper. The twists are all there and are quite unpredictable. Yet, on screen it just doesn't seem to work. Paranoia gives us nothing new that we haven't seen before. Besides the twists, nothing about this story allows it to be an original thriller movie.

What Paranoia tries to do is make a coming of age story into a thriller, which doesn't sound bad at all in theory. It is Robert Luketic's direction that just overcomplicates it. Liam Hemsworth's Adam Cassidy does definitely grow and change throughout the film, but he and his friends still seem like they are college students in an internship program throughout the whole film. The loud music supplied by Junkie XL makes the film feel more like a dance party at times than a serious tale of danger. Therefore, Paranoia seems like it is just a little too old some the younger audience, while it is just a little too young for the older audience.

Liam Hemsworth is not a convincing lead in this film. This is nothing against Hemsworth or his acting ability, but rather the way he is used in the film. His character of Adam Cassidy is not a particularly likable character to begin with, but doesn't redeem himself during the course of the film to the point where the audience starts to connect with him or barrack for him. He starts off as just plain arrogant and ungrateful and although he seems to have lost this by the end of the film, he hasn't picked up the qualities that would make him endearing to the audience. Hemsworth does seem to have the acting potential to be greater than what he has given here, but it is a shame he wasn't allowed to use his full potential in this film.

The chemistry between Hemsworth and Amber Heard is terrible, and again, this is not the fault of either of the actors. The two sleep together once, bicker back and forwards for awhile, sleep together again and then all of a sudden have some deep emotional and romantic connection. There is no indication that they are a couple who care deeply for each other before they start talking about meeting parents. They say the words that two people who have fallen for each other would say, but there is no chemistry or actions to back this up. Luketic seemed to be more interested in showing a montage of their bedroom activity rather than on actually emotions which are apparently there.

Perhaps the best part of the film is watching Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford argue amongst themselves. Again, it doesn't seem like a particularly fiery feud when they are in the same room until the end of the film, but when it does it is worth waiting for. Oldman and Ford are perhaps the two best things about the film, with Richard Dreyfuss, who plays Adam's father, not far behind.

While some films can afford to be not entirely original as they can redeem themselves in other ways, Paranoia just doesn't. It's characters and their players seem hard done by in the way in which they were presented on screen and lead to this film being just a bit of a mess. Although it may just be interesting enough to encourage you to read Joseph Finder's novel.

4/10




You may have also seen Gary Oldman in....
The Dark Knight Rises as Commissioner Gordon

Now You See Me (2013)



Year: 2013
Running Time: 115 minutes
Director: Louis Leterrier
Writers: Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt
Cast: Jess Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Dave Franco, Melanie Laurent

Now You See Me opens in Australian cinemas on the 8th of August 2013 and is distributed by Hopscotch Films.

Now You See Me is one incredibly creative, unpredictable and entertaining film with an amazing cast, but don't expect it to be particularly subtle or realistic at it's core.

Louis Leterrier's film promises an entertaining and fun time and is never for one moment slow or dull. It provides people with a completely unpredictable ending and constant guessing. However, it is a little over-extravagant at times and very farfetched, but the aim of the film is to entertain and it certainly does that. Now You See Me gives us an original film unlike any other we have seen this year or any other year and that is something to be appreciated.

The Four Horsemen magic/illusion group, featuring J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) become an overnight sensation when during one of their magic tricks, they pick an audience member to rob a bank and distribute the money to all their audience members. FBI Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is called in to find out how this group managed to rob a French bank during their show and with Agent Alma Gray (Melanie Laurent) must decide whether it really was magic that enabled The Four Horsemen to commit this crime or is there a Fifth Horseman?

Now You See Me will draw you in and start you guessing straight away. It is the type of rare film that has you fooled, just like everyone in the film. You think you know all the answers, but there is one answer you will be a very, very clever moviegoer to guess. It is a very clever film with a very unique concept. Magic and illusion are mysterious and mystical and as a subject matter to a film it promises the same. `

Now You See Me, like it's subject matter, has no problems entertaining, but it does seem like it tries a little too hard to astonish. The whole film seems like a Las Vegas show (again, like in the film), it is just a bit too over the top and elaborate. At times it tries a little too hard to be an amazing film and gets a bit lost in itself. The majority of the time it isn't too much of a problem as it is just great fun, but it does get to a point where you can almost scoff at how far removed from reality it can get. However, as a whole the film is just a really great piece of entertainment, but it shouldn't be looked at as anything more than that.

Therefore, as one could expect, the film is really quite a visual treat with plenty of confetti and spotlighting. It has it's stars well placed in every scene and many movements resemble a dance routine. Although it is not an action film, the car chase scene is pretty impressive.

Before one even see's Now You See Me, it is extremely hard not to be drawn in by the astonishing cast which has been assembled. The majority of the cast have somewhat easy roles to play (as opposed to other characters they have played in past films), but they all play their roles to the very best of their ability. Mark Ruffalo is the stand out of the film as he is so convincing and natural in his role and a great lead for the film. He has great on screen chemistry with Melanie Laurent, who is also very convincing in her role even though the side story and ending of the film for the two doesn't really add anything to the film. Woody Harrelson is also a lot of fun and quite comical in his role and Dave Franco shows his versatility as an actor by adding Now You See Me to his resume. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman also work well together and by themselves.

As a whole, you may as well be watching a magic show when you are watching Now You See Me. It is overdone in many ways, but you enjoy the spectacle and the players and enjoy the thrill of the unknown.

7/10


You may have also seen Jesse Eisenberg in....
The Social Network as Mark Zuckerberg

You may have also seen Mark Ruffalo in.....
The Avengers as Bruce Banner/ The Hulk

You may have also seen Isla Fisher in......
The Great Gatsby as Mabel

You may have also seen Dave Franco in....
Warm Bodies as Perry

You may have also seen Michael Caine in....
The Dark Knight Rises as Alfred

You may have also seen Morgan Freeman in....
The Dark Knight Rises as Fox