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But they’re part of the fabric, as integral to the formula as the Meet Cute in a rom-com or the false defeat before victory in a superhero flick, and Ficarra and Requa occasionally turn our expectations upside down, letting us think we’re ahead of the movie and then going in a different direction altogether.Īnd those beats are the reason actors love to do movies like this: because playing a con artist is a seven-level chess game, an opportunity for an actor to play an actor. Psych-out moments like those tend to annoy viewers who don’t share my unrepentant fandom of con pictures if you’re one of those people, consider yourself duly warned.
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It’s all knowing explainers and stolen-property beauty shots and razor-sharp wallet lifts and colorful lingo like “the Toledo Panic Button” and “the little blind mouse.” And it’s also full of double-backs and narrative reversals, reset-button moments where you discover that our man’s actually working another angle, or this guy’s actually in on it, or the whole situation was a set-up. The screenplay by Crazy Stupid Love’s Glenn Ficarra and John Requa is loaded, particularly up top, with my favorite element of these pictures: the voyeuristic charge of seeing how these criminal operations work. So Focus is a con-man movie, a subgenre that is, full disclosure, catnip for this viewer. But at the end of the week, he disengages, and doesn’t see her again - until three years later, when they unexpectedly intersect in Buenos Aires, where the targets are up for grabs.
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He takes her with him to New Orleans, to fleece tourists during Super Bowl week she learns fast, and they fall into bed and into something that might be love. In the film’s opening scenes, he meets Jess ( The Wolf of Wall Street’s Margot Robbie), a clumsy neophyte who wants him to teach her the ropes. Smith plays Nicky, a fabulously talented confidence artist. Luckily, his latest movie Focus proves it - reminding us why he became a star in the first place, and providing a glimpse of where he might go from here. And thus Will Smith, once a brand name, finds himself with something to prove. His 2008 drama Seven Pounds was an uncharacteristic underperformer, Men in Black III (which followed a four-year absence from the screen) made boatloads of money and almost no impression, and After Earth - in which he played second fiddle to his son Jaden - was a notorious flop domestically (though it did just fine overseas). From the $800 million-plus-grossing Independence Day in 1996 through the $600 million-plus-grossing Hancock a dozen years later, Will Smith was one of the biggest - if not the biggest - movie stars on the planet, deploying his off-the-charts charisma and unflappable cool in such monster hits as Hitch, I Am Legend, I, Robot, and the Bad Boys and Men in Black movies. In the meantime, IndieWire looks back on some of the studio’s best films below.Ĭhristian Blauvelt, Samantha Bergeson, Kate Erbland, Jude Dry, and Christian Zilko contributed to this story.Sometimes a movie star drifts away so quietly, you don’t even notice.
#FOCUS MOVIE SERIES#
To celebrate the milestone, Focus Features has not only unveiled a new reel, which you can watch here, but the studio also plans to return seven titles from its library to AMC Theatres beginning April 29 for “Focus 20 week.” The titles include “Downton Abbey,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Burn After Reading,” “Eternal Sunshine,” “Atonement,” “Harriet,” and “Darkest Hour.” Learn more about the series here. Inarritu, and “The Motorcycle Diaries” turned Gael Garcia Bernal into an international star.
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One of the leading producers and distributors of arthouse films, Focus Features celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and it’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since films like “Lost in Translation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” broke out of the indie roots to touch the zeitgeist, “Brokeback Mountain” changed the LGBTQ film landscape forever, “21 Grams” launched the English-language career of two-time Oscar winner Alejandro G.