Brooklyn, Kill Your Friends and Burnt The Film Review

after reaching Richard Gasquet. All of that in Sportsday at 6:30pm. Now

on BBC News it is time for The Film Review.

Hello and welcome to The Film Review on BBC News.

To take us through this week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode.

We about, we have Brooklyn, the new

film starring Saoirse Ronan. We have Kill Your Friends, the tale of the

90s music industry. And Burnt, shouting chefs, who knew! ? Shouting

chefs. Saoirse Ronan is 21 years of age, can you believe that?

Astonishing, remember when she was nominated for Best Supporting

Actress Oscar for Atonement, since then she has frankly not put a foot

wrong. Brooklyn is an adaptation of a novel, adapted by Nick Hornby who

did the screenplay and he's done a brilliant job. It's difficult taking

a book which is so subtle and putting it on that screen and he has

done it brilliantly. The story is of a young woman in the early 50s who

finds herself almost unwittingly away to America. Her sister

organised it because she thinks she needs to go and she arrives in

America and she is understandably homesick, she longs for her mother

and her sister she left behind. Initially she feels like a fish out

of water in this new world of strange colours, strange buildings.

However, she starts to find her feet after meeting a very nice decent

young man, an Italian who she meets, oddly at an Irish dance. This gives

her perhaps a reason to stay, and also becomes the centre of dinner

table conversation. Here is a clip. What is the matter with you girls?

Nothing is the matter with us. Is this because he Liz has a young man

-- Phyllis has a young man. Does -- Phyllis has a young man. Does

Phyllis have a young man? I met him on Saturday when he called for Eilis

and he is a gentleman. Will you tell us what you know about him crushed

amuck he is nice looking. I didn't like his shoes. What on earth is

wrong with his shoes? They were a funny colour. I'm going to give you

a sermon on the dangers of giddiness, I can see that giddiness

is the eighth deadly sin. A giddy girl is every bit as evil as a

slothful man and the noise she makes is much worse. Enough!

That is obviously a terrific performance. The reason she is able

to get away with that fairly broad performance is because at the centre

of the film is Saoirse Ronan who is perfectly cast and also understated.

She has an extraordinary ability. Firstly her vocal inflections are

absolutely brilliant. She speaks with the tiny facial expressions.

Everything is gesture led, the way she blinks, the weight she smiles of

the way she stands and tells you about her character. -- the way she

smiles. We see her go from being Summer Rae who is a daughter in

Ireland with a history to somebody in America with a future but she

called back to Ireland and finds herself torn between two states.

Where does her life belong? She's also torn between two suitors, and

who seem like perfectly sensible potential partners. What I love

about the film is this: Firstly it's not scared to be a big US. It harks

back to the classic what they refer to as women's pictures in the 1930s,

40s and dishonest in the 1930s, 40s and dishonoured standard are

essentially about emotional life but not overwrought melodrama is. This

is not a film about great big emotional catastrophes. A strong

woman's part with a lot of others. Whole of the supporting cast is

terrific, Jim Broadbent. But at the centre of it all is Eilis's journey,

which we see modulated brilliantly by Saoirse Ronan. I have to say the

difficulty with the film is not one of those films that shouts its

virtues from the rooftops, because all of its real pleasures are small

moments, small details. It is very understated. It has a beautiful

score, one of those scores that engages your emotions without

feeling like somebody is laying it on with a trowel, the costume

design, the hair and make-up, the way they use Montreal for New York

is well done. Saoirse Ronan is one of the best things I've seen on

screen in ages. She is quite simply one of the most magnetic screen

presence is currently working in cinema. It is just the subtlety of

modulation. It is saying so much with so little. Please go and see

it, it is really worth seeing. Kill Your Friends.

Yes! Slightly different! Remember American Psycho. I remember it in

all sorts of ways. Mary Haran did an interesting screen

adaptation of it and this is basically English Psycho, set in 90s

Britpop era. It is adapted by John Niven who sort of -based it to some

extent on some autobiographical experiences. It is a dark satire on

being an ANR man, Nicholas Hoult is this lonesome character, venal,

talentless, and worse than that he is kind of boring. The film raises

the question of why we would want to spend time in his company. We talked

about this on of Wall Street. In the case of American Psycho the genius

of what Mary Haran did with the Patrick payment character is the

visual wit and invention of the film may get access of them even though

you loathe him you enjoyed the film. In the case of this it seems to be

an awful lot of spending time with somebody who is loathsome and

obnoxious. What does it tell us? It tells us that music industry

executives in the 90s were not interested in art but they were

interested in money. Corporate dullness! I'm shocked! I can tell

that you are stunned. I think we should move on. Burnt, which I have

not seen, sounds to me like it may be a Gordon Ramsay documentary with

a beard, I have no idea. But it sounds interesting. Sadly it's not.

The story is basically an obnoxious shout each chef who has Burnt all of

his bridges in France, see what they did there, turns up in London clean,

no longer an addict and still obnoxious and shouting and sets up

at the Langham where he wants to get the extra Michelin-starred and

redeem himself. He gets a team of colleagues, old and new, some of

whom used double-crossed in the past but he gets them all together and

then does a lot of being obnoxious in the kitchen and we are meant to

think that is OK, he's a genius chef and he knows that cooking is about

more than eating. Every now and again the film stops to explain in

very clear terms how Michelin-starred is workforce that

this is proper telegraphing. Here we go. Do you know about Michelin? It

is a book. It is the book, the Bible. Inspectors eat and award

stars, one, two and three. Or none. No one knows who they are, they

come, they, they go but they have had its. Have to stick to a routine

to give every restaurant the same chance. Miss Lynn men eat in pairs.

Sometimes the Michelin man can even be a woman. A book table before

7:30pm. The first arrives at the bar, his partner arrives half an

hour later, one has the tasting menu at the other a la carte, always.

They order half a bottle of line, they has to tap water and where

business suits and they are polite but they may place a full under the

floor under the table to seek if you notice and they will not drop it

because it could make a noise and that would be too easy. Everything

must be perfect from now on, not good, not are excellent but perfect.

Does that turn out to be important later in the film? Bradley Cooper

came in and they shifted in their chairs, that is directing! Terrific

supporting cast largely wasted, Sienna Miller whose career

reconnaissance continues but Emma Thompson pretty much wasted, loads

of high-profile cameos which you wonder why they are there. The idea

of the shouted, obnoxious, swaggering chef who is rude to

everybody is so ten years ago. Haven't we grown out of that? I'm

bored at the thought, I'm afraid. You will have avoided those

programmes on television because of somebody being shouting and

obnoxious in the kitchen is not that interesting. The film obviously had

a slightly tortuous creation process. It has gone through three

name changes, it started out being called Chef, it changed because

there is a Jon Favreau film called Chef, which is much better! I know

that you are doing missionary activity but Iranians films are

fascinating, not least because I just did a check and I thought that

when I was in Tehran there was one Muller who was blind and had the

film read out to him by an aide and questioned it and then decided

whether it would get a certificate. According to Google there is now two

of them doing it. That shows why film-makers in Iran are doing an

extraordinary job. The extraordinary thing is, I think this is the third

feature made since the 20 year film making ban, two of them were made

under house arrest. Thing about it was it did feel like somebody who

was starting to crack under the strain of their sick instances. In

the case of taxi Tehran it was a much more vibrant work and won the

Golden Bear at Berlin which caused all manner of international

incidents, it did very well internationally. He's in a taxi and

drives around and picks up passengers, actors as it turns out

but it has such a naturalistic feel that you spend time wondering

exactly how this pans out, and what it does is, as with all of his

stuff, it has humour and wit but it is also an insightful portrait of

current data ran command the most brilliant thing about it, people

talk about film-makers making movies under difficult circumstances. This

is making films under difficult circumstances. The fact it has

become an award winner, I want people to see it, because this is

what film-making difficulty is. The DVD is Celtic myth. It is from Tomm

Moore, it was Oscar-nominated last year and it was a fantastic set of

Oscar-nominated and is. It can be watched by anyone, young and old

alike. Crucially the music plays an important part. I thought it was a

real gem. We began with a gem and ended with a couple of gems, that is

not bad. Are reminded that Before We Go you will find more film news and

reviews from across the BBC online including all of our previous shows.