Da krame ich doch gleich noch einmal das hier hervor:



Wir sind halt durch TH und TC sehr mit vier und fünf Sternen vewöhnt. Die können leider nicht immer regnen, auch wenn's natürlich schön wäre.

‘Brain On Fire’ Starring Chloe Grace Moretz Is Disappointingly More Conventional Than Daring [TIFF Review]
Kenji Fujishima
September 15, 2016 5:10 pm
Reviews


Perhaps it was inevitable that “Brain On Fire” — writer/director Gerard Barrett’s adaptation of Susannah Cahalan’s memoir of her month being hospitalized with the rare autoimmune disease anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis — would lose arguably the most interesting aspect of the book: the fact that, because Cahalan can’t remember anything about her hospitalization, she treats her own life during that month as a journalistic investigation, and, by extension, as an inquiry into her own self. Barrett’s docudrama is, by comparison, a straightforward, linear depiction of what Cahalan described in her book as her “month of madness”: the paranoia, violent mood swings, and seizures that, after a slew of misdiagnoses, would eventually leave her bedridden in a hospital until one doctor was able to finally pinpoint the cause of her illness.

Still, Barrett’s film has a blunt, primal effectiveness on its own terms. Though he occasionally aims for a subjective approximation of her experience during this traumatic time — heightened sound design that threatens to engulf her, blurring of images to bring visceral immediacy to the headaches she feels —generally he takes an omniscient approach to this harrowing story, laying out the details of Cahalan’s case in the manner of a journalist giving us facts. The experience of watching “Brain On Fire” is thus akin to gawking at a car crash in slow motion, with each scene introducing a new horror as Cahalan’s (Chloë Grace Moretz) mental disorder gets scarily worse with each seizure and random outburst.

Even more unsettling than seeing Cahalan doing such things as talking to a faucet or fouling up a major interview for the New York Post by insulting a senator, however, is witnessing level after level of institutional failure in the American medical system. As Barrett’s film presents Cahalan’s case, doctor after doctor seemed all too willing to chalk her disease up to alcohol and/or drug abuse or simple overexertion, throwing prescription drugs at the problem instead of trying to root out the cause. But then, what of the first doctor Cahalan sees, who clearly noticed that the bedbug bites she claimed were on her left forearm weren’t actually there, but who apparently didn’t say anything about it to her? Barrett refuses to offer anything by way of comment, instead simply cutting away to the next scene; that detachment only increases the film’s disturbing power.

Though Barrett proves to be interested in medical process in the first half of the film, it ultimately pivots towards a more conventionally crowd-pleasing sensibility. A wave of “triumph of the human spirit” affirmation marks its last act, especially when Dr. Souhel Najjar (Navid Negahban), the doctor who was able to finally diagnose Cahalan’s disease correctly, enters the picture. Sentimental touches abound: Cahalan’s devoted boyfriend Stephen (Thomas Mann) writes a song for her that inspires her to shed tears even in her catatonic state; her frustrated father Tom (Richard Armitage) delivers an angry outburst that emphasizes his desire to “find out what is wrong with my daughter;” John Paesano’s music score ramps up the tear-jerking electronic droning. Cahalan recovers from her severe encephalitis, but instead of ending with the book’s reflective, sobering aftermath, Barrett instead concludes the film with that hoary biopic cliché of a scene in which someone — in this case, her editor at the New York Post, Richard (Tyler Perry) — inspires her to write about her experiences, the result of which we have just bore witness for the last hour and a half.

“Brain On Fire” is often effective, and at times positively enraging, but one can’t help but lament the much more disquieting film that might have resulted had the filmmakers been more willing to trust the facts of Cahalan’s case to speak for themselves instead of feeling a need to shove them into uplifting platitudes. [B-]

'Brain on Fire': Film Review | TIFF 2016

8:12 PM PDT 9/16/2016 by David Rooney


If you're going to ask an audience to accompany your lead character down a disorienting spiral of memory lapses, paranoid episodes, manic mood swings, hallucinations and debilitating fatigue, it's generally a good idea to make them care about her first. Irish filmmaker Gerard Barrett somehow neglects that step in the wearisome Brain on Fire. That means we watch Chloe Grace Moretz's epic meltdown from a bored distance, until the drama remembers its lost calling as a disease-of-the-week movie. At that point, we receive the abrupt news of a cure with an indifferent shrug.

Barrett (Glassland) adapted the screenplay from the memoir by American journalist Susannah Cahalan, and there's a lot of raw meat here for an actor to chew on, which might explain why producer Charlize Theron optioned the book. It chronicles Cahalan's harrowing experiences with a mystery illness that stumped doctors until it was correctly diagnosed as anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an immune deficiency that causes the body to attack the catatonic brain.

At least that's how Moretz's Susannah explains it in a voiceover that ushers in the story's happy resolution, with a lurching suddenness that seems to come out of nowhere.

The lack of fluidity is partly caused by Barrett operating for much of the movie under the misapprehension that he’s remaking Safe, Todd Haynes' dark portrait of sanity in inexorable retreat. That film had a creepy power to crawl under the skin and stay there with all its ambiguities still percolating. But despite Barrett's careful attention to creating an unsettling mood of existential horror by loading the soundtrack with ambient dread, and his depiction of New York as a breeding ground for over-stimulated instability, Brain on Fire just sits there, inert and uninvolving.

At 21, Susannah is happy in what, with just a hint of irony, she calls her "dream job." She's a cub reporter at the New York Post, writing exposés on illegal Russian butt implants. Her boyfriend Stephen (Thomas Mann) is an aspiring musician who describes his sound as The Smiths-meets-Tom Waits (in your dreams, dude), while Susannah's deadpanning work chum Margo (Jenny Slate) calls him "that budget version of Joey Ramone." Susannah's editor, brusque but encouraging Richard (Tyler Perry), thinks she's ready to tackle bigger stories.

But suddenly, she starts zoning out at random moments, suffering from headaches, missing deadlines and meetings, and imagining things that nobody else can see or hear, like bed bug bites or leaky faucets. Following a seizure, Stephen takes her to the hospital, where the doctors' guesswork about stress, lack of sleep and excessive partying doesn't quite explain her lapses into a vacant-eyed trance state. Nor do the misdiagnoses of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia later on.

No longer able to function in the office or at home alone, Susannah goes to stay with her divorced mother Rhona (Carrie-Anne Moss), bouncing between high highs and low lows while taking meds that don't seem to help. One of the weaknesses of the movie is that Rhona, Susannah's banker father Tom (Richard Armitage) and Stephen all lack definition as characters, so they just hover uninterestingly on the sidelines as Susannah goes from screaming anxiety to unhinged euphoria while being shuffled from one doctor to the next. Perry and Slate give their characters more substance and personality, but they disappear for much of the movie.

As Susannah's condition worsens and continues to flummox medics, the film just gets stuck in a repetitive pattern that drains rather than builds tension, a problem inherent in both the writing and editing. There should be some emotional investment in the family's reluctance to send her to a psych hospital, as well as a flood of relief when a doctor finally identifies the problem. But the family connections are so mechanically drawn that it's dramatically ineffectual and emotionally flat.

The film's chief selling point is a pinball-ricochet performance from Moretz that hits all the marks and yet is never wholly convincing — she's more morose than vulnerable, more sullen than terrified. Moretz brought such memorable intensity and preternatural poise to child roles in movies like Kick-Ass, Let Me In and Hugo; if this project was intended to test her ability to carry a dramatic movie solo as an adult, it's a miss.

Production companies: Broad Green Pictures, Foundation Features, Denver and Delilah Films
Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Thomas Mann, Richard Armitage, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tyler Perry, Jenny Slate
Director-screenwriter: Gerard Barrett, based on the memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, by Susannah Cahalan
Producers: Rob Merilees, Lindsay Macadam, Charlize Theron, A.J. Dix, Beth Kono
Executive producers: Lisa Wolofsky, Daniel Hammond
Director of photography: Yaron Orbach
Production designer: Ross Dempster
Costume designer: Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh
Music: John Paesano
Editor: J.C. Bond
Casting director: Maureen Webb
Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Sales: Mister Smith, WME

89 minutes

Gender Stereotypes Are Stronger Than Ever at Toronto International Film Festival

Bleed for This and Brain on Fire are your typical Oscar-bait that deal in regressive gender norms.
Most Popular

By Stephen Marche
Sep 16, 2016

Oscar bait has always come in two flavors: actor and actress. This year, at the Toronto International Film Festival, the latest attempts have emerged from the young hot actors who have achieved just enough success to take a shot at permanently increasing their paychecks. This year, the male flavor of Oscar bait comes from thin-faced heartthrob and this magazine's favorite person Miles Teller in his boxing movie Bleed for This. The female variety stars Chloe Grace Moretz, as a suffering woman with a mysterious illness in Brain on Fire. Each of these movies should come with a warning attached: "THIS FILM EXISTS STRICTLY TO PROVE THAT THE PERFORMER IS OSCAR-WORTHY AND SHOULD NOT BE VIEWED FOR ANY OTHER REASON."

There is, however, a more depressing phenomenon lurking underneath the Oscar-baiting: the gender stereotypes at work here. I'm hardly a SJW—Jezebel has a file on me—but these movies are ridiculous in their crudity about the realities of gender. And it's weird. Bleed for This is unremitting in its toxic masculinity. Miles Teller plays Vinny Pazienza, who held world championship titles at three different weights in the late '80s and early '90s. His story is a classic example of the triumph of the human spirit. After suffering a car crash, he endured a halo, a rack that screwed into his skull, for six months in order to heal. Against all odds, as they say, he eventually recovered and went on to win more championships. (No mention is made, incidentally, of the various criminal charges he was prosecuted for, but what the hell.)

Bleed for This is macho taken to the point of existential absurdity. The only moments when guys aren't working out or beating the shit out of each other, they're talking to each other in curt Providence-inflected fuck-yous or pouring casino chips worth thousands of dollars over their girlfriends' breasts. I'd call it the ultimate curlbro movie, since most of the movie is lofty music playing over a guy in a neck brace lifting weights, but I don't know any curlbros so into curlbroing that there's nothing else in their life.

Bleed for This is one beat away from an SNL sketch about an Oscar-bait boxer movie. It ends with an interview Pazienza gives when a reporter asks him what the biggest lie in boxing is. His answer is ,"It's not that simple." That's the biggest lie. Because it is that simple. Get it? You just have to want it. Maybe I'm naive, but I really thought we were past this bullshit. Grit is all it takes? Are men really still that stupid? I guess in Miles Teller's mind, they are.

Brain on Fire could also serve as an SNL parody. It contains, just to give the most obvious example, a lengthy slow-motion scene of a pretty blonde woman being chased down a hospital hallway by orderlies. Brain on Fire, like Bleed for This, is based on a true story. Moretz plays Susanna Calahan, a reporter at The New York Post (her dream job, she claims) suffers an incredibly rare disease of the brain, goes crazy in her New York apartment, goes comatose, and then recovers after an expert finally diagnoses her correctly. It is pure disease-of-the-week shit.

I know it's unfair to compare current movies to the classics, but I couldn't help thinking about other movies about young female journalists and struggling young male boxers while I was watching Brain on Fire and Bleed for This.

In His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson also works for a New York paper, like Susanna Calahan. The point of that movie is that Hildy wants to be able to retire to be a good wife and mother and lead a quiet life, but she can't because she loves the thrill of chasing stories too much and is too willful and eccentric to submit to some guy. In other words, in 1940 it was possible to present a female character who flouted social convention heroically in the pursuit of her individuality.

In On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy, a failed boxer, comes to realize that the masculinity by which he has lived his entire life—the brotherhood of the Union and the boxing ring—is a sham, that he has been destroyed by the toughness he allowed to define him.

These movies were made in 1940 and in 1954, respectively. The point of Brain on Fire is: "Girls need the world to support them as they heal." The point of Bleed for This is: "Guys gotta be tough, you know?" We are going backwards in a hurry.

The worst part is that these movies aren't particularly bad. They're well made. The performances are excellent. It's not even that they're politically incorrect—far from it. They just indulge an absolutely straightjacketed version of masculinity and femininity that is not necessarily evil so much as unbelievably boring. Surely, in 2016, we deserve more than the Pabst Blue Ribbon and Pumpkin Spice Latte of the movies. That's what we're being served this year by two of the best young performers in the world.

Und - auf die Schnelle: Susannah Cahalan ist z.B nun mal eine gutaussehende Blondine, die man auch nicht mal eben gegen das Klischee oder Stereotyp gegen den Strich besetzen muss oder kann...

Warst Du denn von der Buchverlage angetan?

WeLiveEntertainment@WeLiveNetwork

#BrainOnFire World Premiere Review #TIFF16 @ChloeGMoretz is fantastic. anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis...

TIFF 2016 Review: ‘Brain on Fire’

by Scott Menzel

TIFF 2016 Review: Brain on Fire
The year’s most important film that will help bring awareness to a rare disease.

Brain on Fire is based on the autobiography of Susannah Calahan. Susannah is played by Chloe Grace Moretz and the film showcases her battle with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

I found Brain on Fire to be a fascinating film because I learned something totally new while watching it. I had no idea what encephalitis was so I appreciated how the film showcased all the stages, leading up to full catatonia. I love that the film focused on the people in Susannah’s life and how they struggled to accept that she was sick. The doctors just haphazardly guess what is wrong and have no problem just prescribing medication without thinking of the side effects.

Since this is an autobiographic film, director/ writer Gerard Barrett had to do a lot of research to accurately portray Susannah’s battle. The film might be a little difficult for some to watch because the majority of the runtime focuses on the disorder and how it is taking over Susannah’s life. The film shows multiple mood swings as well as multiple seizures. The film takes its time, demonstrating how this illness took over her life. Audiences should be aware that this isn’t a film made to entertain like most book to screen adaptations. It is an informational and somewhat relentless look into one woman’s battle with a life changing disease.

Chloe has always proven to be a great actress but I believe this is her strongest performance to date. Chloe captures everything that the real life Susannah must have faced and brought it to life with her performance. Moretz presents Susannah as this kind hearted and vibrant person early on. Once the illness begins that’s when Moretz becomes a tour de force. The scenes where she has various mood swings going from really upset to incredibly happy are perfectly played out. Also, the sequences where she has seizures felt genuine and really made an impression on the audience.

The supporting cast does a good job holding their own as well. Tyler Perry was particularly good as Susannah’s editor at the NY Post. I liked how his character was a hard ass yet was still a kind hearted soul underneath. Jenny Slate brought a much needed comedic element to the story, which helped the film shy away from this very serious tone from time to time. Thomas Mann was decent but didn’t have enough screen time. Mann was particularly good in a few scenes with Susannah’s dad, played by Richard Armitage. The one that stood out came near the end after Stephen had proven himself worthy to Susannah’s father. All the supporting characters added something to the story and weren’t just thrown in as filler. They all represented someone important in Susannah’s life.

In closing, I would like to point out that I believe Brain on Fire is a rare film that might help save lives and spread awareness of a rare disease of which so few people are aware of. While the film does have its fair share of flaws, such as a rushed ending, I commend Susannah for letting Barrett bring her story to life. It was so inspiring seeing this film at the Toronto International Film Festival and hearing and seeing various survivors share their stories in-person. This is an educational and important film that isn’t for everyone but will certainly find a dedicated audience. It is a very real and emotional tale with a powerful performance by Chloe Grace Moretz. Brain on Fire could very well be the most important film of 2016.

Scott “Movie Man” Menzel’s final rating for Brain on Fire is a 8 out of 10.

Und noch ein Eindruck mit 8 von 10 Punkten:

http://weliveentertainment.com/welivefi ... n-on-fire/

Ehrlich gesagt habe ich bei einigen Kritikern das Gefühl, dass die das Buch noch nicht einmal gelesen haben und dann natürlich vom Film enttäuscht sind (keine Wunderheilung á la Lorenzos Öl, Dr. House-mäßige Diagnosesuche, die Haupdarstellerin ist schon wieder blond...).