Joe Wright’s filmography is full of things I’ve never cared to see: Atonement, The Soloist, Pride & Prejudice. But all that changed with Hanna, Wright’s first real foray into directing action. For comparison’s sake, it’s similar to The Bourne Identity in the way it balances psychological issues with sporadic bursts of action. The young female action heroine subgenre seems to have risen in popularity in recent years with Kick-Ass and Sucker Punch, but make no mistake: Hanna deals with the genre’s popular themes much more effectively than either of the aforementioned movies. 

Saoirse Ronan – an actress I’ve never seen before on screen – is phenomenal in the title role. She’s captivating, capable of switching between starry-eyed wonder and straight-faced badassery with the ease of someone far more experienced. Raised in the forest by her rogue ex-CIA agent father Erik Heller (Eric Bana), Hanna has been trained her entire life to be a solider. Armed with knowledge of the world memorized from an encyclopedia, Hanna spends the first twenty-ish minutes of the film convincing her father she’s “ready.” Erik agrees, and they set a plan in motion that aims to destroy Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett), Erik’s old CIA handler.

Bana disappears for long stretches of the film, but he gives a compelling performance when he pops up. He’s a versatile actor: for my money, he was the best part of both Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Judd Apatow’s Funny People. Cate Blanchett – an actress I normally despise, despite her near-universal critical acclaim – was also relegated to a smaller role than the trailer indicates, and much to my surprise, I enjoyed her performance. She adopted some sort of Southern or Texas accent (a creative decision I assumed would make her even more difficult to tolerate), but she showed restraint and didn’t overplay it. This may be the first time I’ve truly appreciated her in a film (keeping in mind that as of now, I’ve only seen a handful of her movies).

More than anything, Hanna is Joe Wright’s canvas to explore the strangeness of growing up and punctuate these thoughtful, dreamy moments with bouts of ass kicking. Hanna meets a traveling family led by Olivia Williams (“Dollhouse”) and Jason Flemyng (Deep Rising), and forms the first friendship she’s ever had with their daughter, Sophie (Jessica Barden). Sophie couldn’t be farther away from Hanna in a cultural sense, but this provides Wright with some material to ponder that tactile sense of bonding with a friend for the first time that almost everyone can relate to. (Perhaps not quite to the extent that this movie delves into it, but at least on some level.) Wright does a good job at balancing the two aspects, using violence to highlight the power of the relationships formed and giving action film fans something to chew on. There are some phenomenal sequences in this movie: Hanna’s interaction with fake Marissa in the holding room, the cargo container chase scene, and – this film’s pride and joy – the magnificent long take following Eric Bana through the bus station and continuing down into an extended fight in a subway chamber. (That subway fight will certainly be one of my favorite scenes of the year.)

I don’t know anything about The Chemical Brothers, who did the score for this movie, but I do know that their work here was fantastic. The score is pulse-pounding in all the right places and inquisitive when it needs to be, using synths and techno beats to emphasize action and xylophones and bell tones to indicate innocence and curiosity. The score is a work of art unto itself, one that has real staying power and will probably be one of my favorites at year’s end. As of this writing, some of the score is streaming for free online over at MySpace, so check it out over there. It’s not music I’d normally be inclined to listen to, but it compliments the action on screen really well and the whistling melody adds to the overt fairy tale qualities of the film.

In my review of Sucker Punch, I pleaded that we’d see some smarter blockbusters during this summer season. I wouldn’t categorize Hanna as a blockbuster by any means (quite the contrary, in fact – the movie has a very down-to-Earth vibe to it), but this is the kind of intelligence I’m hoping for. Joe Wright knows what’s up: it’s not an impossible task to make a movie with a message that also includes excellent action scenes. Fans of the Bourne series, this one’s for you. Until next time…

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According to Deadline Armie Hammer (The Social Network) has signed on to star in Relativity’s The Brothers Grimm: Snow White alongside Julia Roberts. Hammer will play Prince Andrew Alcott, while Roberts is set to play the Evil Queen.

The site also reports that Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Hanna) is “in discussions” for the title role of Snow White, but her casting has not been confirmed.

Director Tarsem Singh (Immortals) has entered pre-production on the movie, and the aim is to begin principal photography in May. The company has also set the release date for June 29, 2012, which is a shrewd move as it is six months ahead of Universal’s planned December release for Snow White and the Huntsman. We heard yesterday that Viggo Mortensen will no longer be playing the Hunstman opposite Charlize Theron and Kristen Stewart, so it appears Huntsman is behind in the Snow White race.

Singh’s Snow White movie begins with the evil stepmother killing Snow White’s father and destroying the kingdom. Snow White then bands together with a gang of seven quarrelsome dwarves to reclaim what is rightfully hers.

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Last year Hanna director Joe Wright confirmed that British electronic music duo The Chemical Brothers would be scoring the entire movie, much like French electronic music duo Daft Punk scored Tron Legacy.

Today Universal sent over a preview track from their Hanna soundtrack called ‘Container Park’, and it’s pretty good.

Listen below:

Container Park by The Chemical Brothers

You can listen to more tracks below:

Here’s the full tracklist:

1) Hanna’s theme
2) Escape 700
3) Chalice 1
4) The devil is in the details
5) Map sounds / chalice 2
6) The Forest
7) Quayside synthesis
8) The Sandman
9) Marissa flashback
10) Bahnhof rumble
11) The devil is in the beats
12) Car chase (arp worship)
13) Interrogation / lonesome subway / Grimm’s house
14) Hanna vs Marissa
15) Sun collapse
16) Special ops
17) Escape wavefold
18) Isolated howl
19) Container park
20) Hanna’s theme (vocal version)

The soundtrack will be released exclusively through iTunes on March 15th.

Hanna stars Saoirse Ronan as a 14-year-old Eastern European girl raised by her father (Eric Bana) to be a cold-blooded killing machine. Cate Blanchett also stars in the film as an icy intelligence operative on a mission to find Bana, a former CIA operative, but they get to Hanna first. The movie will be released April 8th by Focus Features.

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At the age of 16 Saoirse Ronan has already been nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Atonement and played the lead character in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. Now she is turning to action in Hanna, which re-teams her with Atonement director Joe Wright.

Today Focus Features released the first trailer for the film, and if you enjoyed Hit-Girl’s antics in Kick-Ass earlier this year you may be interested in this.

Watch below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRUx88vRjIk

In the movie Saoirse Ronan plays a 14-year-old Eastern European girl raised by her father (Eric Bana) to be a cold-blooded killing machine. Cate Blanchett also stars in the film as an icy intelligence operative on a mission to find Bana, a former CIA operative, but they get to Hanna first.

Hit-Girl showed that people are up for seeing young female assassins on the big screen, and it’ll be interesting to see how Hanna is received. It looks to have taken a more serious tone, where as Kick-Ass took a more comedic approach to a young girl violently killing grown men.

The movie will be released April 8th.

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At the age of 16 Saoirse Ronan has already been nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Atonement and played the lead character in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. I don’t know whether it’s because of her talent, luck, or both, but she’s landed herself another meaty role in Hanna as a teenage assassin.

USA Today were given the first official image from the film, which you can see above. Hanna is directed by Atonement director Joe Wright (I guess that explains Ronan’s casting) and also stars Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Hanna (Ronan) is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a solider; these come from being raised by her father (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Sweden. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own (Cate Blanchett). As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.

Focus Features will be releasing the film sometime in 2011, so we can probably expect a trailer towards the end of the year. Hit-Girl recently showed that people are up for seeing young female assassins on the big screen, and it’ll be interesting to see how Hanna is received. It sounds as if the film will be a bit more serious, where as Kick-Ass took a more comedic approach to a young girl violently killing grown men.

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Saoirse Ronan, who will be seen later this month in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, is set to play a teenage assassin in Hanna. The film will be directed by Atonement director Joe Wright and “follows a 14-year-old Eastern European girl (Ronan) who has been raised by her father to be a cold-blooded killing machine. She connects with a French family, forms a friendship with their daughter and goes through the pangs of adolescence. When the girl is dragged back to her father’s world and discovers that she was bred as a killing machine in a CIA prison camp, she must fight her way to a free life.”

We recently saw with Kick-Ass that young females running around killing people can be quite badass, and with Hanna being described as “La Femme Nikita meets the Bourne movies” we can expect more on-screen deaths my young hands.

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The trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones is now online, and can be watched below. The film tells the story of a young girl, Susie Salmon, who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. However this heaven isn’t all cloudy and fluffy like we’d imagine, it’s full of great looking CGI scenes like the one above.

We would have already seen The Lovely Bones by now if Paramount didn’t push it back to December. The studio thinks the film is Oscar bait, which I think it might be. It’s Peter Jackson afterall. He can make a movie about a giant gorilla win 3 Oscars, so a film about a murdered young girl should see him choking on the gold.

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Just the other day we were glaring at the new poster which looks a lot like the Internet Explorer logo…just more golden. Now we have a nice new teaser trailer. I have never read the book, and didn’t even know the movie was being made, but it looks quite interesting. It’s a different concept, and unlike most movies with children as leads, I would actually consider seeing this. Plus it has Bill Murray in it.

Enjoy!

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The movie City of Ember now has a teaser poster!

No, this doesn’t look ODDLY familiar at all!

I smell a lawsuit! Or at least a schoolyard slapping match over copyright infringement. SOMETHING.

The movie sounds like one of those schnazzy new kiddie flicks that have been coming out the past few years. Here’s the synop:

For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights. But Ember’s once powerful generator is failing … and the great lamps that illuminate the city are starting to flicker. Now, two teenagers in a race against time, must search Ember for clues that will unlock the ancient mystery of the city’s existence, and help the citizens escape before the lights go out forever.

Sounds kind of interesting. The cast alone would probably make me go see the movie, including Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, Saoirse Ronan (pronounced “SIR-SHA”, who played young Briony in Atonement, and Susie Salmon in the upcoming Peter Jackson drama The Lovely Bones), and Harry Treadaway (I wouldn’t really go for him alone, because I have no idea who he is. Though he kind of looks like Skandar Keynes, who plays Edmund Pevensie in the Narnia movies, which is who I actually thought this WAS until I looked it up online. He’s been in, well, nothing of note as of yet).

Should be interesting! This film flickers its way into theaters October 10.

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