When writer/director Billy Ray was going through the convoluted casting process for his remake of the Argentinian mystery thriller Secret in their Eyes, he heard that Julia Roberts was looking for a part that she could “lose herself in.” This was after August: Osage County and she wanted something equally demanding.
Ray met Roberts for lunch at her home in Malibu and he decided that there was only one way to meet her demands – change the gender of her character; make someone who was written as a man a woman.
Roberts then took up the baton – so to speak – and did something that she had always wanted to do. She wrote to Nicole Kidman and asked if she would make this movie with her. The result of this collaboration – on the basis of the trailer, at least – seems significantly different from the Argentinian film, which won the ‘Best Foreign Film’ Oscar in 2009.
Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor play partners in a new anti-terrorism unit in Los Angeles in 2002, who become involved in a brutal rape and murder case which changes their lives. The case remains unsolved for thirteen years until he discovers startling new evidence and pressurises the district attorney (Kidman’s character) to re-open it.
Secret in their Eyes, which is Billy Ray’s third film as a director – following on from the impressive Shattered Glass and Breach –opens in Ireland on 26th February. Ray’s credits as a writer include Captain Phillips, State Of Play, The Hunger Games, Flightplan, and Hart’s War.
Current release Deadpool is probably the wittiest and generally most satisfying of the X-Men, or X-Men spinoff movies so far. It has personality, edge, pace and some of the best action we’ve seen in the whole franchise. In the aggressively fast-talking title role, the under-regarded Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds finally finds a part that elevates his career.
That said, the all-star X-Men: Apocalypse, which is due out in May, sounds as if it could be the major fantasy film of the summer. When the first and most powerful mutant of all, the immortal Apocalypse awakens, he finds he is disgusted with the modern world (1983) and sets about “cleansing” humanity with only Raven, Professor X and a group of trainee X-Men to stop him.
This one restores series director Bryan Singer to the helm, introduces the super-busy Oscar Isaacs to the cast and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be considerably more fun than the last one, Days Of Future Past, which brought Singer back to the franchise after more than a decade.
The early-1980s setting could also provide it with some nice opportunities for irony and wit. Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult will all be returning in their usual roles – and two TV regulars, Sophie Turner (Game Of Thrones’ Sansa Stark) and Olivia Munn (The Newsroom’s Sloan Sabbith) have supporting roles.
This is the tenth movie in the X-Men sequence and Deadpool’s massive box-office success means there is probably more to come.
Philip Molloy presents The Picture Show every Saturday on Newstalk from 6pm. Listen back to the podcasts here.
