Literate and sensitive romance: Falling Into Place reviewed
Falling Into Place is a love story written by Aylin Tezel, directed by Aylin Tezel, and starring Aylin Tezel. That's a lot of Aylin Tezel so I was nervous going in. What if it's too much Aylin Tezel? What if Aylin Tezel and I don't get along? Who even is Aylin Tezel? But I knew within the first few minutes we were in safe hands and I was set to like this Aylin Tezel. In Falling Into Place she's created a literate and sensitive romance that is allowed to unfold gently. If it's 'high-octane action' you're after, then your better bet this week is Ballerina, the John Wick spin-off. This is strictly for the low-octane crowd. Do not expect octane.
The film opens on a wintry Isle of Skye where Kira (Tezel, who is famous as an actress in her native Germany, I now know) has decamped for the weekend. So, too, has Ian (Chris Fulton). He's come to visit his troubled family. Kira had booked into a B&B with her boyfriend but he's just dumped her and now she's here alone. There's a spark from the moment they first lock eyes across a crowded pub bar. They spend the night together but it's one of those Before Sunrise nights. That is, a night of connection rather than consummation even though the sexual attraction is strong.
They lark about in the dark streets, their conversation sometimes daft, sometimes existential. Tezel writes, directs, stars and looks adorable in a little woolly hat – is there no end to her talent? – which, thankfully, she never pairs with a pastel-coloured cardie as would have to happen if this were a romcom.
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Metro
3 hours ago
- Metro
'I think woman are strong regardless' - John Wick Ballerina director
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Len Wiseman, the director of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, has revealed why this movie isn't deliberately feminist. It was announced in 2019 that a female-led spin-off of John Wick had been commissioned, with Keanu Reeves set to be an executive producer on the film. With Ana de Armas at the helm as the lead, Eve Macarro, the movie picks up chronologically during the third John Wick film and further explores the Ruska Roma, the Russian group that trains children to be assassins. The story follows Eve's training as an assassin and her journey of personal revenge as she seeks out the group who murdered her father in front of her as a child. In a hotel in London, Metro sits down with Wiseman for a wide-ranging interview about the film, and straight off the bat, we discuss whether he considers the film 'feminist'. 'It's an action movie with a really powerful and strong lead, and I wouldn't say so much…,' he reflects and tries to find the right way to express his sentiment. 'I've been doing female-driven characters in action really from the beginning of my career,' he says, referencing his action horror series Underworld that starred his ex-wife Kate Beckinsale. 'I really don't put too much of a weight on it, I just think women are strong regardless. 'So I'll sayit's not intentionally, to me it is an action movie with a really kick ass lead that is a female character.' He emphasises that lines such as 'fight like a girl' – a phrase that recurs in the film and is even the title of the song as the credits roll – are not an attempt to pander to being a movie making a statement. 'To put a flip on [fight like a girl] and make that a very powerful thing, rather than a teasing phrase or what have you, that's absolutely intentional. But, I didn't want it to ever feel pandering to that. Just be real to it.' The director's undiluted enthusiasm about the film is evident, and he's eager for more female-led action movies, but not ones that are originally written as male characters. Ana, who played the character Paloma in the James Bond series, previously explained why she felt 007 shouldn't be played by a woman: 'Why don't we have more movies about Paloma? Let James be James and John Wick be John Wick. We'll do our thing,' she told The Independent. Wiseman nods and says he 'totally agrees,' with her sentiment. 'If they turned into like Jane Bond. I'll just go, 'What are you doing?' No. 'I would love to see more original, female-driven action movies, and I'm always glad when there's one that really works.' He adds that when it comes to women's roles in these movies, he also doesn't believe women-led action films should only be directed by women. 'It's if you were to ask, if a male-led action movie should only be directed by a man. I don't think that either,' adding that James Cameron and Katherine Bigelow are both fantastic directors who are capable of directing incredible action movies, regardless of gender. 'I think it's the best person for the job, is really what it should be. That's kind of my thought on it.' He added that he has pet peeves about when these characters are made sometimes indestructible , though. 'Often, I'll see that the female character is like indestructible in a way that is almost overtly kind of sexy and powerful and it just leans in too much into the sexiness of it.' He added that the really great action characters are not the ones who pose after a fight scene, but the ones who look knackered. 'Keanu will go through this amazing sequence, and after he's done, he's just f*****g tired,' he said, Comparing Reeves to Harrison Ford, and Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs he adds: 'Instead of landing like a Marvel character, they just eat it on the ground and then get up and keep fighting.' During the production of the film, there were rumours that John Wick director Chad Stahelski had to 'reshoot' the film. Stahlski rubbished the rumours at the time, and while chatting to Metro, Wiseman cleared up the story. 'Here's the truth of it, which is a personal thing, I ended up having a health crisis, and I had to go to the hospital for a little bit, and it was a really scary time. But everything is good and great. 'And thank God Chad was there. And we were always planning on splitting up the schedule in terms of some of the additional stuff that we were shooting to just try to get everything possible for the audience.' More Trending He said that at most, the rumours were 'annoying', but he was grateful things worked out the way they did, as they were able to make an incredible film. 'So it's annoying. I guess if anything, like you hear reshoots and you go, 'Oh, that's bad.' There were additional shoots, and then I had to go to the hospital for a little bit. So thank God it worked out the way it did.' 'The important thing is, the movie is incredible. I had a great time, Chad and I worked, you know, in partnership with it. And it is a movie I think people are gonna absolutely love.' Ballerina is in cinemas now. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Inside Saw's future as 'disagreements' over 11th film left iconic horror franchise '100% dead' MORE: Jennifer Lopez already tipped for an Oscar after Kiss of the Spider Woman trailer MORE: Fans of iconic 70s band blast 'awful' biopic casting of Nick Jonas as rock legend
Sky News
15 hours ago
- Sky News
Fight like a girl? Ana de Armas on twisting phrase for a new meaning
More often than not, the inclusion of women in an action film is shaped by the male gaze, the tropes, the stereotypical backstory and/or the unnecessary physique-revealing scenes connected to it. "That's a pet peeve of mine," director Len Wiseman tells Sky News in an interview for his new John Wick spin-off starring Ana de Armas. "I think a lot of times you see it's overly sexualized or there's not a realism to it, and it is important to me that [this was] approached from a female [perspective] that can be labelled: 'A woman is strong to begin with'. I think there can be some kind of pandering in certain ways that I think is too far." Wiseman started his career with the female-led action film franchise Underworld starring his former partner Kate Beckinsale before directing Die Hard 4.0, Total Recall and Sleepy Hollow. From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina serves as a spin-off to the John Wick films and is set between the events of the third and fourth movies. It follows a young trainee assassin who looks to be the next world-renowned assassin in the film universe. "We never wanted to go as far as Eve looking like we were doing a female John Wick. Eve is Eve and is a woman... and it's a woman in a man's world," says de Armas. "That phrase 'fight like a girl', we wanted that to come across as something really empowering and really pull from there. That is a motivation for her. That has been said before in a derogatory way or as something diminishing." Wiseman and de Armas both say that while they wanted Eve to be strong, they also wanted her to feel every moment of the battle. If there are choreographed fight scenes or flashy action moves, she feels them. "I wanted her to struggle," explains de Armas, detailing how she consistently asked for her to look more dishevelled as the film progresses. "It didn't come from a place of I need to prove myself, I don't need to prove myself to anybody, but I wanted to do that from the moment we started talking about the script, we even brought on board a female writer, because it was important for me to have that." De Armas, similar to her soon-to-be co-star Tom Cruise, relished in undertaking the more difficult stunts and wore the bruises and marks from them like badges of honour. The actress would even send photos of the markings the following day to Wiseman proudly as she jokes: "I just wanted to keep him posted, you know, on how my body was at the end of the day." The film was shot practically, with the explosions and countless action surprises for film fans happening on set repeatedly. When asked about her toughest stunt to execute, without hesitation, she mentions a scene which included prop grenades. "All the debris and everything that was flying with those grenades were real, so most of the dust and the little things flying were getting in my eyes, and I just could not open my eyes during the scene. So in between takes, the medics were like just rinsing my eyes with some water." With a film set around changing the meaning of 'fight like a girl', de Armas says she has a clear definition of it now: "Be yourself and make people gravitate around you and your rules. You make your own rules." From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is in cinemas now.
Daily Mail
19 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Ana de Armas' Ballerina keeps you on your toes in this action-packed thriller, writes BRIAN VINER
Ballerina (15, 125 mins) Verdict: Keeps you on your toes Rating: Nobody should be misled by the title of Ballerina into trying to take their eight-year-old daughter to see it. It's marketed as 'from the world of John Wick ' and is one of the most insanely violent films of the year. But if you like that sort of thing, and don't mind a plot so perfunctory that it's really only there to link one outbreak of murderous mayhem to the next, then Ballerina will keep you on your toes. It's propulsive, action-packed and quite thrillingly bonkers. A duel between a man with a whopping flamethrower and a woman with a thunderous hose is worth the price of admission alone. Keanu Reeves, as Wick, pops up only fleetingly, at the beginning and the end. He hasn't learnt to talk any faster since the last film, but can still load and draw a gun twice as quickly as it takes him to complete a sentence. The star turn this time is Ana de Armas, who played a CIA agent in No Time To Die (2021) but as it turns out was only taking baby steps in the shooting-and-killing business. Here she plays Eve Macarro, whom we first meet as a child watching her brave poppa being bumped off by hitmen with sinister crosses branded on their wrists. Twelve years later, under the beady eye of Anjelica Huston's director, Eve is being trained as an assassin herself. She is also being trained as a ballerina, which seems like a curious blend of careers until you see how sharply she kicks men in the crotch. Nobody makes the gag in the film, so allow me. She is The Nutcracker. Having completed her apprenticeship by executing one of her coaches, Eve is launched into the outside world as a high-class minder for rich kids at risk of abduction. Cue a crazy martial-arts sequence at one of those New York nightclubs you only see in the movies, where everyone keeps dancing even after a dozen thugs have been shot or dispatched with ice-picks. But all this is just a rehearsal. More than anything, Eve wants to nail the international criminal gang who killed her poppa, which leads her (after a spot of mass murder in Prague) to a picture-postcard Alpine village, snowy home to a ruthless cove known only as the Chancellor, suavely played by Gabriel Byrne. With every single villager on his evil payroll, the Chancellor thinks he calls all the shots. But needless to add, killing Eve isn't easy. Apart from some gloriously unlikely family dynamics, and a couple of appearances from a waxy-faced Ian McShane, that's about it. If you're not into carnage, even when it's inflicted by someone as pretty as (Tom Cruise's girlfriend) Ana de Armas, you should pirouette well clear of Ballerina. Otherwise, Len Wiseman's film is a blast. Dangerous Animals (15, 98 mins) Rating: Verdict: Horror-thriller with bite Sean Byrne's Dangerous Animals holds human life just as cheaply but isn't what you'd call a blast. It's a horror-thriller set on Australia's Gold Coast that preys on our fear of serial killers, and our fear of the deep, to give us a murderer who knocks off young women by feeding them to sharks. This is what's known in the business as a genre mash-up: Jaws meets Se7en. I suppose we can count ourselves lucky there are only two genres mashed up. Jaws meets Se7en Brides For Se7en Brothers would be too much. Heather (Ella Newton), a nervy middle-class English girl on a gap year, cannot count herself lucky. She and a fellow backpacker, a Canadian lad, make the fatal mistake of boarding a boat skippered by Tucker (Jai Courtney), a brash Aussie who advertises 'diving with sharks' experiences. Soon, the boy is a goner and Heather is in chains below decks, where in due course she is joined by Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a savvy American surfer subdued and dragged off by the monstrous Tucker. Unlike Heather, Zephyr has a few tricks up her sleeve. She also has a steamy one-night stand behind her, with hunky local estate agent Moses (Josh Heuston), who won't rest until he finds out what has happened to her. Thus the stage is set for lashings of genuinely suspenseful action and properly stomach-churning gore, although the credibility of the plot goes overboard a few times, not least when we see just how many travellers Tucker has turned into shark bait without eliciting, as far as we can tell, the slightest interest from the Gold Coast cops. That's the thing with fictional monsters; too often, their stories don't add up. Goebbels And The Fuhrer (15, 135 mins) Goebbels And The Fuhrer, on the other hand, features a pair of real-life monsters whose stories are horribly, harrowingly true. But actually the whole point of Joachim Lang's tremendously potent German-language picture is not to depict Adolf Hitler (Fritz Karl) and his devoted propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (Robert Stadlober) as monsters, rather as human beings warped and twisted by their hatred of Jews and their love of power. The film cleverly fuses drama with actual newsreel footage and, as compelling as it is disturbing, is well worth seeing. All films reviewed are in cinemas now.
