Stories centered around the American immigration experience in many ways seem akin to the creation myths of much older countries. But whereas gods and goddesses may have divined their countries from the stars or sea or some other mysticism, America was built slowly over time. Be it migrant Asian natives who would form the beginnings of Native America, wandering from a now non-existent peninsula 24,000 years ago, or the slow but steady trickle of peoples from every nation on the planet seeking shelter, work, and freedom. Nothing inspires American pride more than tales of how we got here. John Crowley‘s Brooklyn isn’t exactly a creation story, in fact, it takes place in the ’50s years after the immigration boom to America, but this story—adapted by Nick Hornby from Colm Tóibín’s novel—encompasses that very real part of being American: balancing history with the future and learning to belong.

The young woman walking that fine line is Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish girl who is given the chance to move to America when job prospects in her small Irish town run dry. Her part-time job working in a convenience store is easy to say goodbye to—what with her boss being a stuck up gossip and all—and even her friends have romantic prospects and more contentment in their small town life. The hardest part for Eilis is leaving her elder sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) behind with their mother Mary (Jane Brennan), but she is assured by Rose that this is the right decision.

So Eilis departs, traversing literal rough seas on the voyage to America. Her bunkmate aboard the ship advises her, giving her a crash course in how to survive being alone in America so far from home. But nothing really prepares Eilis for just how homesick she becomes. Her boarding house-mother, Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters), holds nightly dinners, and these scenes are by far the most hilarious of the film, perfectly showcasing the variety of young women making their way in America, from old-fashioned to flashy and stylish. Mrs. Kehoe is the perfect blend of old Irish propriety curbed with sharp modern spunk and the way she chides Eilis’s more rambunctious cohorts and advises the girls on their skin regimens is just one of many great examples in the film of the way the women around Eilis are her greatest support system. When Eilis’s homesickness pushes her to sullen depression it prompts her new boss, Miss Fortini (Mad Men‘s Jessica Paré), to call in the priest who sponsored Eilis’s trip to America. Jim Broadbent plays Father Flood, who enrolls Eilis in a bookkeeping school in order to give her something to focus on to distract her from her sadness.

The plan works remarkably and as Eilis begins to invest in her future she starts to let down her guard. At a church dance one Saturday night Eilis is asked to dance by Tony (Emory Cohen), a young man who is instantly quite taken with Eilis’s quiet charm and fierce intelligence. He pursues her vigilantly, and to Eilis he is so completely American. His family is Italian, but their cultural background differences only make them more drawn to one another. Eilis’s spirits raise considerably—her wardrobe even brightens, and indeed the costume design is among the many details that elevate the film—and she and Tony allow themselves to fall head over heels.

But when tragedy strikes back home in Ireland, Eilis is thrust back into her previous world, and when she returns home she has to face her old life as a new person. Ronan magnificently portrays Eilis’s depth of feeling and inner struggle with choosing what sort of life she wants to mold for herself. Now an independent young woman, she finds herself to be more desirable than ever back home and she is given very real temptation in the form of Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), a tall and successful young Irishman who seems to have the same sort of ambition as Eilis combined with a love for their home country.

Eilis’s decision essentially boils down to choosing whether she wants to choose to be Irish or Irish-American, each choice attached to a very different man who promises a very different future from the other. This conundrum feels so very close to the heart of American patriotism. That those who formed this country, whether it was on the Mayflower or many years later as an immigrant, each had to choose to be American. Crowley keeps Eilis’s decision harrowing to the end, maintaining that it isn’t necessarily about choosing correctly, as there is no clear path, it’s about choosing one’s own identity.

Brooklyn is at once inherently American and incredibly multi-cultural, showcasing just how intricate and emotional the immigration experience was for many who came to this country. That it uses the perspective of an empowered and vibrant young Irish woman is what makes Brooklyn an excellent story. It’s an across-the-ocean love triangle yes, but it’s the battle within Eilis that is most interesting. Yves Bélanger’s cinematography makes 1950’s Brooklyn both exciting and alien at first but ultimately more romantic as Eilis’s experience there changes. The imagery of Ireland feels much more spacious, open and home-like. Ultimately the film is beautiful, but it’s Ronan’s sparkling eyes and subtle expressions that cause not only Tony and Jim to fall in love with her, but in fact everyone else in the film and all in the audience as well.

A perfectly crafted romance and pride-inducing immigration tale, Brooklyn feels very much like reading an engaging book. One you just can’t put down and immediately want to re-read once it’s finished.

Weaving a young Irish immigrant’s story into a heartfelt, romantic drama, Brooklyn exudes an entire diary’s worth of emotion with a light-handed touch. Based on Colm Toibin’s 1950s-set novel of the same name, Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) as she leaves her home in Ireland for a new life in America, torn between where she’s comfortable and where she finds opportunity. She arrives as a timid but amenable girl, unsure of what to say or simply too afraid to say it. Director John Crowley (Boy A, Closed Circuit) portrays a world in which the people around Eilis are consistently decent. In Brooklyn, the biggest obstacles facing new immigrants are loneliness and having been displaced.

After arriving in America, Eilis struggles to discover her sense of belonging. Stuck in a boarding house for Irish women run by Mrs. Kehoe (a wonderfully snappy Julie Walters), Eilis unhappily toils away at a department store, silently crying when she opens letters from home. It isn’t until she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a handsome and soft-spoken Italian plumber, that Eilis starts to smile. His courtship of her is palpably sweet. As she finally opens up with him, talking up a storm through their first dinner together, Eilis’ restrained glee is contagious.

Nick Hornby (An Education, Wild) peppers the film with eloquently poignant lines of dialog. When Eilis first meets with the Irish priest (Jim Broadbent) that sponsored her voyage across the Atlantic, he tells her that homesickness is like any other malady and that it can linger for a while before getting passed onto someone else. The understated manner in which the script allows Brooklyn’s characters to articulate their hopes and fears creates earnestly powerful moments. There’s only one short romantic speech in the film and damned if it isn’t a more genuine expression of love than anything to have come from a Nicholas Sparks adaptation.

In a role perfectly suited to the emerging 21-year-old Irish star, Saoirse Ronan captivates in the part of Eilis. She conveys the anxiety of unfamiliar situations, as well as the joy of developing a real connection to others. Her growth from deferential girl into self-assured woman is a gradual process, enlivened through the subtlety of her acting. It’s an outstanding performance, rich with sentiment and sweetness. Emory Cohen’s charismatic presence is a treat, too, providing an affable quality in support of Ronan’s more serious demeanor. His sincerity as Tony is appealing without becoming preposterous. Even Domhall Gleeson, whose role as a potential new suitor in the story should elicit scorn, proves to be delightful.

The section in where Eilis gets forced into returning to Ireland adds complications to a film largely missing them. She returns as a radiant figure, her bright, American clothes distinguishing her from the crowd. Often, Crowley positions Eilis as a splash of color within a muted frame. As Eilis wavers on her fate, Brooklyn refuses to show its hand. It’s easy to imagine different audiences leaning towards separate conclusions from this love triangle, but its ending is a fitting, beautiful final note.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the love story depicted in Brooklyn; however, the restraint it shows with its dramatic tension makes the film a pleasant, tender drama. In fleshing out Eilis as a woman with a full life who aspires to more than just marriage, she becomes an endearing protagonist in a genre that often lacks those. Brooklyn is a gorgeous illustration of an immigrant’s experience in the mid-20th century, complimented by the touching romance at its core.

Just days after its Monday night Sundance Film Festival premiere, Brooklyn has been scooped up for release by Fox Searchlight. Variety reports Searchlight’s $9 million purchase came out on top of a bidding war involving The Weinstein Company, Focus Features and Roadside Attractions. The John Crowley-directed period piece was written by Nick Hornby, adapted from a 2009 novel by Irish writer Colm Tóibín. Saorise Ronan stars in a role that some are already touting as a potential 2016 Oscar contender.

Early reviews of Brooklyn have been mostly strong, with some comparing the film’s mix of comedy, drama and romance against the backdrop of an immigrant’s story to In America. Following young Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey (Ronan) as she navigates 1950’s Brooklyn, finds new love, and is forced to choose between two countries. The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman wrote, “First half of Brooklyn is just about perfect. Loses considerable steam toward the end, but still good overall.” Tim Grierson of Paste Magazine calls Brooklyn, “The Immigrant meets The New World with the sweetest human beings ever.”

Brooklyn also stars Domnhall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, & Julie Walters, and will likely come to theaters late in 2015. The movie continues to screen through this weekend at Sundance 2015.

Partway through The Grand Budapest Hotel, there’s an argument between Dmitri (Adrien Brody, looking brilliantly evil) and his deceased mother’s lawyer (Jeff Goldblum). The lawyer refuses to hand the dead woman’s fortune over to her son as the details of her murder haven’t been cleared up. Dmitri angrily leaves, and his henchman (Willem Dafoe) casually tosses the lawyer’s cat out of a window on his way out. It’s a cruel act, and a funny visual gag, until the lawyer peers out his window and the camera cuts to his cat’s splattered body below.

Writer/director Wes Anderson uses these shock moments of sudden violence more than once throughout the film. The dead woman (Tilda Swinton, unrecognizable with pounds of old age makeup) is Madame D., an old rich countess who frequented the titular hotel. Located in the mountains of the Republic of Zubrowka, a made up European nation, the hotel is a gorgeous and highly popular establishment. Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) is the hotel’s concierge, a charming man who was also taking Madame D. to bed during her visits (one of Gustave’s many duties as concierge included sexually satisfying the rich old ladies who visited). When it’s revealed that she put Gustave in her will as the recipient of a priceless painting, Madame D.’s family frames him for her murder.

Gustave receives help from Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), a young lobby boy that Gustave has taken a shine to. The story, taking place in 1932 during some unnamed war ravaging the country, is narrated to us by an older Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) in the 1960s. He’s telling his tale to a young author (Jude Law) over dinner at the hotel, now well past its glory days. Law narrates the 1960s segments, which are actually from a novel being read to viewers in the 1980s by (presumably) a now much-older author (Tom Wilkinson). The nesting-doll structure may seem frivolous, but Wes Anderson’s films thrive on frivolity.

The multi-layered narrative also establishes Anderson’s attempts to comment on memory and nostalgia. Moustafa’s story in the 1930s, shot gorgeously in 1.33:1, is stylistically Anderson’s best work to date. The set design, meticulous framing, whip pans, quick zooms, and use of animation and miniatures, among Anderson’s other visual trademarks, operate at a level that more than matches his story’s large scale. Anderson and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman are clearly having a field day, and it shows. The charming style also shows Moustafa’s nostalgia for this period of his life, as if these “good ol’ days” represent something that’s never to return.

Anderson is aware of how dangerous this way of looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses is, which is why he throws in scenes like the one with Goldblum’s cat. He is purposely breaking the spell his film casts, reminding viewers that the time period was still a tumultuous one. The hotel is not so much a shining example of long-lost civility and politeness as it is an escape from the harsh realities of wartime and poverty. These two worlds of fantasy and reality eventually come together, but through Anderson’s lens the stylistic flourishes still remain. The final scene of the ‘30s timeline, also the bleakest part of Moustafa’s story, switches to black and white, showing how Anderson still finds a way to fill his heavier moments with aesthetic quirks.

While Anderson’s toying with memory and nostalgia is interesting, it fails to make any impact to the film overall. The handling of violence makes for an awkward juxtaposition, one that’s more admirable in its intent than execution (I never thought I’d say this, but Anderson should take some tips from Quentin Tarantino in this area). The war going on in the film’s background is wiped of any details, save for some vague allusions to the SS. The obscuring of these elements only muddy the water, and the dense plotting of Anderson’s screenplay make his thematic points get swallowed up by the film’s aesthetics.

Not that the aesthetics are a bad thing; The Grand Budapest Hotel is still a treat to watch. Fiennes is perfect as Gustave, and Anderson’s script is filled with plenty of hilarious moments. The massive ensemble, where seemingly every role is filled with a well-known actor (supporting cast includes Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Saorise Ronan, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson just to name a few), work together perfectly. While The Grand Budapest Hotel works well, it only does up to a certain point. What the film amounts to is nothing more than a well-done and admirable piece of fluff.

The Grand Budapest Hotel trailer

Since the advent of color in film, gushing red stuff has been one of cinema’s most enduring images—the sight of blood seldom fails to trigger something in us. Blood can be spectacular (Kill Bill), repulsive (Evil Dead), or erotic (pretty much every vampire movie ever). In Byzantium, Neil Jordan’s latest, particularly sullen take on the vamp-flick, blood represents the penance, anguish, shame, and suffering inherent in the immortal curse, much like the great Let the Right One In (though much flashier and sans the snow). Stylish, beautifully shot, violent, gothic, romantic—Byzantium is vampire lore done right, though it has its hiccups. It gets too caught up in its own mythology at times and the storytelling gets a little cluttered near the end, but ultimately it’s an engrossing modern vampire tale that’s elevated by a killer cast and stunning visuals.

The film notably resembles Jordan’s biggest feather in his directorial cap, Interview with the Vampire, though it exchanges super-hunks Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt for a pair of equally (if not more) fascinating lady-vamps, a mother and daughter duo. Gemma Arterton plays the viciously protective and predatory mother of teenager Saoirse Ronan, a gentler, more conscientious soul. Arterton hunts her mortal prey with cunning and frightening precision, while Ronan chooses to only feed on the willing, an apologetic death-bringer of sorts. Forced to live as vagabonds, darting from city to city to protect their immortal identity (much to the frustration of ever-teen Ronan), their newest stop-off is a tranquil coastal town where Arterton seduces her way into securing them a place to stay—an out-of-service hotel called Byzantium (which she converts into a brothel, an environment we later learn she’s all too familiar with.)

Ronan meets Caleb Landry Jones, a sweet, endearingly shy yet persistent admirer, who’s determined to break Ronan’s shell. Jones is captivating, a scraggly and unkempt fellow with long, tangled red locks that tumble where they may (he’s the polar opposite of the super-symmetrical sex-bros of Twilight.) Jones and Ronan play off one another so well it’s impossible not to get caught up in their every glance, every subtle gesture. We yearn for them to be together just as they yearn. The youngsters’ tug-o-war courtship is the film’s everything—without it, the Byzantium would amount to nothing more than a good looking plot machine.

There are no fangs to be found here—instead, Byzantium’s vampires have thumbnails that extend into razor-sharp talons. This major alteration to the vampire anatomy, while potentially offensive to purists, actually works for me, as it allows the actors to convey their characters’ personalities physically, and quite articulately. While Ronan gently pops open her volunteers’ wrists like a soda can and sips, Arterton gives her victims repeated, brutal “thumbs-ups” to the jugular and guzzles. Speaking of Mrs. Arterton, I’ve not seen her any better—she oozes with so much carnality and sexual dominance it’s intimidating. Ronan is equally riveting, doing the same existential brooding Kristen Stewart is endlessly criticized for, but making it look utterly mesmerizing (her arctic blue eyes speak her sorrow.)

At about the film’s halfway mark, we begin fleshing out the mother/daughter backstory with intrusive flashbacks. These scenes feel more like pesky interruptions than anything, halting the momentum of the wonderful Ronan/Jones romance incessantly. What’s worse, the mythology detailed is of no interest whatsoever, a generic gothic fairy tale with an uninspired feminist twist. The anti-climactic final “action” sequence is rudimentary and predictable (it thinks it’s pulling a swerve while we’re easily three steps ahead), and upon reflection, the film feels more like an episode than a self-contained movie (sequels are inevitable.) Despite all this, what resonates most about Byzantium aren’t its flaws, but its truly remarkable strengths—the themes of identity and trust; the richly textured, alluring imagery; the brilliantly acted relationships. Most interestingly, it’s what’s absent from this vampire tale—fangs, stakes, garlic, crosses, coffins, holy water—that afford Jordan and company enough breathing room to weave such an intoxicating and (ironically) humanistic yarn.

The first images from Quentin Tarantino’s latest film Django Unchained have been released. One image shows former slave Django (played by Jamie Foxx) alongside a bounty hunter (played by Christopher Waltz) that is helping him to get his wife back from an evil plantation owner. [Paste]

Speaking of Django Unchained, the movie poster has been unveiled for it. It looks pretty wicked if I must say so myself. [IFC]

Despite Hugo having a lackluster overall box office performance (even though critically it did well, winning five Oscars) Martin Scorsese stands firm on his love for 3D. He expects to use 3D in all of his future projects. [Movieline]

Jennifer Connelly and Saoirse Ronan have been confirmed to join Russell Crowe in the cast for Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming film Noah. Playlist reports that Liam Neeson may be playing the villain role. [Playlist]

As if Noah will not be keeping Darren Aronofsky busy, the rumor is he will be doing a biopic about George Washington called The General. [Twitch]

My favorite indie duo, the Duplass brothers, have been hired to adapt a screenplay from Tony D’Souza’s novel Mule. Mark and Jay Duplass will not be directing it though, instead Todd Phillips of The Hangover will be. [Deadline]

Wes Anderson fans are in for a real treat, six clips from Moonrise Kingdom have arrived. The film is one of the most anticipated films of the year and as we reported, it will be opening Cannes film festival this year. [Twitch]

Speaking of clips, the opening scene of The Dictator has been made released by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Sacha Baron Cohen, John C. Reilly, Megan Fox, and Ben Kingsley. Watch the nearly 2 minute clip over on ComingSoon. [ComingSoon]

The indie short film The Southern Belle is now streaming on Snag Films in it’s entirety (10 minutes) for free. You can see the movie review we did on the short film here. [SnagFilms]