TIFF: Ralph Fiennes carries the engaging and tense "Conclave

by Matt St Clair

Ralph Fiennes in "Conclave" © Focus Features

After taking audiences through the treacherous WWI battlefields in the Oscar-winning epic All Quiet on the Western Front, director Edward Berger crafts a different exercise in tension in the form of a Pope election with Conclave, a high-stakes thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris that is full of high-stakes political intrigue and stellar performances...

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All About Link

My New Plaid Pants Jake Gyllenhaal accepts Tom Holland's challenge to put on a shirt while doing a handstand (everyone is bored these days!)
IndieWire Pedro Almodóvar and Spike Lee will both curate exhibits for the new Academy Museum. Great choices, right? 
Film School Rejects a psa "what's on Quibi and what can I watch on it" good question!

Artemis Fowl, ever-shifting release dates from Marvel and otherwise, The Prince of Egypt, Ryan Murphy's Hollywood, All About Eve and more after the jump...

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Box Office: You Must "Focus"

I kept thinking of Agent Carter's Russian villain whenever I saw the trailer to Focus, because he said "you must focus" every other line in that series while he performed his instant super-hypnosis. Which was ridiculous but the show is really fun. Anyway: Will Smith! The media tour around Focus kept focusing (sorry) on how Will Smith is not concentrating on box office now! and Box Office doesn't define him! so they were obviously prepping for disaster should it happen. But no disaster. He's still bankable even if a $19 million opening isn't what he used to be able to carry off with ease. I wonder if the presence of Margot Robbie helped? Or maybe people don't even realize yet that it's "that hot girl from Wolf of Wall Street".

The other new wide release was the horror film The Lazarus Effect which did over $10 million. 

In news we care more about Julianne Moore entered the top ten for the first time with Still Alice during her Oscar-winning weekend and at $12 million already the Alzheimers drama is turning into quite a little hit for her. As beloved as she is, she's not a box office star so this is a major success --along the lines of a Far From Heaven. Unfortunately her other movie, the David Cronenberg picture Maps to the Stars, tanked in limited release. I'm sure the distributor utterly confused its potential audience by holding it in reserve during those weird intermittent bursts of buzz it had for well over 9 months and then releasing it quietly while everyone was concentrating on her other movie. But she's marvelous in that one, too.

The Irish thriller '71 starring Jack O'Connell and set during 'The Troubles' also opened in very limited release (reviewed) and it's very good so you should see it. 

What did you see this weekend? Or maybe you just stayed in to bingewatch House of Cards?

'Duplicity' or Con Artists in Love

Tim here. Tomorrow sees the release of Focus, a romantic drama about two con artists, played by Will Smith and Margot Robbie. Time will tell if it finds its audience – the critics are steadfastly ambivalent – but I would at least argue on its behalf, sight-unseen, that it's already gotten at least one thing right. There's a slick likeability to any generally good con artist picture, which openly confess to the thing that most movies try to hide at least somewhat: the reason we watch them is to be told enthralling lies. We go to the movies in the specific hope of being conned, and never more so than in the case of romances, which in Hollywood's view are games of people trying to trick other people into falling in love with them, while tricking us into believing that all these contrivances are true and meaningful instead of just skilled craftsmanship. I'm hoping against hope that Focus ends up being really great.

While we wait to find out, I'd like to take you back in time to the last great con artist love story (if we skip over American Hustle, which has other goals in mind), the wantonly under-appreciated Duplicity from 2009. It was writer-director Tony Gilroy's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Michael Clayton, transposing that film's world of corporate espionage and skullduggery into the frame of a fizzy romantic comedy. It was also the second film to pair Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as a pair of sniping lovers after the acidic "everybody hates everybody" drama Closer. And Duplicity tanked, and was widely unloved, and even six years later, those facts still break my heart a little bit. 

More...

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Linkman

Empire The London Film Festival has commenced with Benedict Cumberbatch opening the festivities
Kenneth in the (212) Harrison Ford in 1978 
Logolog This one is for the linguistics and trivia nerds: Last week's box office top ten featured the first ever "pangram" -- I didn't know what that was but the article explains it
Film School Rejects will "Vs" movies be the next franchise trend? God help us all 

Guardian claims that The Imitation Game might be the queerest film for the mainstream in ages. I don't want to do that math because, if so, how depressing because it's not all that queer
/Film a Labyrinth sequel in development?
Pajiba Jennifer Garner talks about Ben Affleck's penis on the Ellen show. Hold me. Why, Jennifer, why?
Esquire Gone Girl as the story of Ben Affleck's career. Undeniable connections!
Vulture theorizes on how all the seasons of American Horror Story could be connected. I guess they mean, besides the famous actors?
/Film First images of Margot Robbie and Will Smith in Focus. Hey, do you remember when there was a movie with that title with William H Macy and Laura Dern? Anyone?
Guardian So, you guys, it turns out that that Effie Gray movie starring Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning does actually exist and its now playing in the UK 
HitFix Sean Durkin of Martha Marcy May Marlene fame will direct a film version of Little House on the Prairie. Bizarre. 

Casting News
The Playlist Léa Seydoux is your next femme fatale Bond girl. YAS! Great choice, 007 team
Variety Gabriel Luna joins Ellen Page in Freeheld
The Playlist Jennifer Jason Leigh takes the largest (only?) female role in Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight. 

Retweet
I take it you've heard about American Crime Story, a new Ryan Murphy series that will take on true uh... American crime stories.

Theory: Ryan Murphy keeps making tv about gruesome murders (AHS, soon ACS) because he secretly wants to murder the GLEE cast

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) October 8, 2014

True crime instead of the freaky supernatural fiction crime that American Horror Story traffics in, right? I had to have my say on Twitter, you know? Hee

Weekend Watch

James Franco's "Making a Scene" a comic mash-up series, fuses Beetlejuice and Batman together. What would Michael Keaton say? Probably "who cares" given his recent comments about the Batman franchise post him.

While we're on the topic of Batman, The LEGO Movie is going to have a solo Batman sequel in 2017. Exactly when do we approach maximum saturation of all things Batman? You'd think it would have been awhile ago. I worry for the the 2020s

Finally
For Towleroad, I wrote up a piece on films of LGBT interest in the big Foreign Film lineup with their trailers and such. Check it out. I'm dying to see Switzerland's The Circle. And I didn't realize until researching this piece that Concrete Night is made by a writer/director pair who are famous lesbians in Finland. How about that?

Stay tuned for more coverage on this category and of course all the others too, right here. Interviews and events are already starting off blog and soon we'll start sharing them. Let's consider Monday/Tuesday the official grand opening of this new awards season here at TFE.