The real star of Brooklyn is Fiona Weir - the casting director. Even the walk-on roles in this pulse-quickening Irish immigrant song, adapted from Colm Tóibín's equally lovely novel, have been assigned with a painterly eye for who will fit in period, give off enough eccentricity to convince, and pull us into the story.But there's more to the art of casting than going about it face by face. It's also about who fits with whom, the charge when actors play off each other. In the tingling chemistry between two of her young leads, Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen, Weir and the film's director, John Crowley, achieve something close to a miracle - the kind of old-fashioned, shivers-down-the-spine serendipity that's hushed and special, and can't be taught.These characters don't meet for half an hour of screen time, or two-odd decades of lifetime, in their separate childhoods before the 1950s: they are Eilis Lacey and Tony Fiorello. She's the heroine, a young woman from Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland; he's an Italian-American plumbing apprentice who lives with his family in a poor Brooklyn neighbourhood.First, Lacey has to make the wrenching decision to leave home, her mother (Jane Brennan) and sister (Fiona Glascott) behind, to pursue the chance for a better life Enniscorthy can't give her.Not so much chewing the scenery as keeping a beady eye on it inches from her lips, Julie Walters gets plum comic support as Mrs Kehoe, Eilis's boarding-house landlady, who sits mediating between all her lodgers at supper and issuing blunt putdowns.But real lift-off is achieved with Ronan and Cohen together. This is easily Ronan's most mature performance, and she steps up to the occasion with captivating sensitivity. The whole shape of Eilis's life feels somehow up to the young actress playing her, which is exactly as it should be.Back in Ireland, Tony has a competing suitor, played with generous good grace by Domhnall Gleeson, whose now-reliable instincts give the film a helping hand.Tony's vulnerability and need are truly precious things.The baby-step ascent of his expectations is Brooklyn's secret storytelling weapon. When Eilis offers him the prim, throwaway gift of two further dates at the pictures, not just the one, the surge of hope and dumbstruck joy on Cohen's face could light up every matinee screen in the land. What others saySaoirse Ronan lights up the screen in the year's best and most beguiling love story. The surprise is that it also goes deeper, sadder and truer.Peter Travers, VarietyA superb, emotionally turbulent account of a young Irishwoman's attempt to become an American in the early 1950s. Tod McCarthy, Hollywood ReporterA very heartfelt and absorbing film. Peter Bradshaw, The GuardianAlso openingTHE PROGRAMStephen Frears' fictional take on the Lance Armstrong story is even-handed, witty and shot with verve.This is LondonTHE LOFTErotic thrillers are a time-tested genre, but this effort, scripted by Wesley Strick, is neither erotic nor thrilling. Hollywood ReporterGRANDMAShort, tart, yet unexpectedly sweet, Paul Weitz's film is a small-scale character study - and, because that character is played by Lily Tomlin, it's mesmerising. Seattle TimesHOW TO MAKE LOVE LIKE AN ENGLISHMANThe Hollywood romantic comedy hits an astonishing new low with this disastrous pairing of Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. VarietyBLINKY BILLHey kids! If your parents reveal plans to put you anywhere near Blinky Bill the Movie, ask why you are being punished in this way. Herald Sun..