All articles by Peter Brunette
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Reviews
Beautiful
Dir: Juhn Jaihong Korea, 2007. 88minsBeautiful, whose original title in Korean is the mellifluous 'Arumbdabda', is often confused and sometimes, especially near the end, even downright silly, but it's never wholly without interest. Its first-time 30-year-old director, Juhn Jaihong, is a protege of Kim Ki-duk, the prodigiously productive and internationally-known ...
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Reviews
What No One Knows (Det Som Ingen Wed)
Dir. Soren Kragh-Jacobsen. Denmark/Sweden, 2008. 95minsNow 61, Danish director Soren Kragh-Jacobsen has only made a handful of films in the last thirty years, and while they have done well in Denmark , they haven't left much of a mark elsewhere. The well-known exception was Mifune (1999) which enjoyed the distinction ...
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Reviews
Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger (2007)
Dir: Cathy Randall. Australia, 2008. 103minsThis charming, highly-accomplished first feature will gladden the hearts of parents everywhere looking for a film to watch with their pre-teens, especially girls. Directed by 35-year-old South-African-born newcomer Cathy Randall, who has been working in Australia for some years, this coming-of-age story of a 13-year-old ...
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Reviews
Be Like Others
Dir: Tamaz Eshaghian. USA, Canada, Iran, 2008. 74minsBe Like Others , a documentary on a topic that seems almost like the start of a joke -- did you know that in Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death, but sex-change operations are not only sanctioned by the governing clerics but almost ...
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Reviews
Fireflies In The Garden
Dir. Dennis Lee. US. 2008. 98 minutes.Some fine performances are compromised by a confusing script in first-time director/screenwriter Dennis Lee's often-involving family melodrama, Fireflies In The Garden. So much of the film is so delicately accomplished, and sports such evident star power as Julia Roberts and Willem Dafoe, that it's ...
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Reviews
The Feelings Factory (La Fabrique Des Sentiments)
Dir. Jean-Marc Moutout. France/ Belgium.2008, 104 minutes. Jean-Marc Moutout's The Feelings Factory (La Fabrique des sentiments) wants to be about life and love and all manner of profound things, but ends up as little more than a jumble of endless close-up reaction shots of French actress Elsa Zylberstein. Unfortunately, this ...
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Reviews
The Aquarium (Genenet Al Asmak)
Dir. Yousry Nasrallah. Egypt/ France/ Germany, 2007. 111 mins.As undoubtedly the best-known protege of t legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, Yousry Nasrallah has been working as a film critic or film-maker for nearly 30 years. Since 1988, hhee has directed a series of distinctive films that frequently show up in ...
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Features
Canada - Community service
Contemplating the conclusion of another successful edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival (Viff), Alan Franey, the festival's director since 1988, is a happy man.Once again, paid admissions to the 300-plus films screened - among them She's A Boy I Knew, winner of the Vancity People's Choice Award for Most ...
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Reviews
Rails & Ties
Dir. Alison Eastwood. US, 2007. 96 mins.The feature-film directorial debut of Clint Eastwood's 35-year-old actress daughter, Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties is an always serviceable, professionally accomplished film. Unfortunately, its ambitions are hampered by a central situation that is redolent of too many made-for-TV films, as well as by implausible ...
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Reviews
The Take
Dir: Brad Furman. US 2007. 96 mins.The Take is a potentially very interesting film that suffers from a bad case of bi-polar disorder. On the one hand, a gritty, often exciting crime-and-caper movie, and on the other hand an authentic-feeling domestic drama set in one of the Latino barrios of ...
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Reviews
Married Life
Dir: Ira Sachs, US, 2007. 90minsIra Sachs's new film Married Life commences with wonderfully droll cartoon-like credits that simultaneously amuse with their archness and efficiently evoke the 1940s era in which the film is set. Like the film as a whole, however, they promise a great deal that is, alas, ...
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Reviews
The Stone Angel
Dir. Kari Skogland Canada , 2007. 115 minutes.The Stone Angel is a perfectly respectable, solidly-made film which, beyond the expert performance by the always reliable Ellen Burstyn, has unfortunately little to recommend it for consideration for theatrical release beyond its home territory. Adapted by director Skogland from a beloved Canadian ...
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Reviews
The Past (O Passado)
Dir: Hector Babenco Argentina-Brazil 2007. 114 mins.Brazilian director Hector Babenco's latest film is an utterly misbegotten effort, a long way from his earlier successes such as Pixote and Kiss of the Spider Woman, or 2003's Carandiru. Despite the presence of international heart-throb Gael Garcia Bernal, the tortured, sometimes unwittingly laughable ...
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Reviews
Darfur Now
Dir: Theodore (Ted) Braun. US, 2007, 99 minutes Some may find this documentary on the tragedy currently unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan a bit too slickly produced for its own good, but all in all, it's a solid, exciting, informative, and occasionally moving portrait of that troubled, desperate ...
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Reviews
Chaotic Ana
Dir: Julio Medem. Spain, 2007, 120 minutes. Many viewers felt that director Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle was one of the best films of the 1990s. Its mixture of poetic visual and verbal imagery, coupled with a strong dose of mysticism and steamy insights into love and sex, ...
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Reviews
Lars And The Real Girl
Dir: Craig Gillespie USA 2007. 106 mins.Ryan Gosling, one of the finest actors currently working in American independent cinema, is once again outstanding in this offbeat but exceptionally accomplished film. Starting off as funny and quirky, Lars and the Real Girl gradually becomes a riveting yet never heavy-handed psychological portrait ...
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Reviews
The Price of Sugar
Dir: Bill Haney. US. 2007. 90min One the stand-out documentaries at Austin's SXSW festival this past spring was Bill Haney's The Price of Sugar, a sobering and well-done examination of the unpleasant realities behind the sugar tens of millions of Americans innocently sprinkle over their cereal in the morning. A ...
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Reviews
Alexandra (Vishnevskaya)
Dir: Alexander Sokurov. Russia, 2007. 92 minutes.This new effort by Russian auteur Sokurov, an anti-war minimalist 'situation' - calling it a 'tale' would imply more attention to narrative than the film warrants - set and actually shot in the ruins of Grozny, in Chechnya, is very much in the humanist-formalist ...
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Reviews
The Edge Of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite)
Dir/scr: Fatih Akin. Ger/Tur. 2007. 122 mins. Though it's far below the level of his debut film, Head-On, which won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2003, Fatih Akin's new film, once it comes together at the end and finally defeats the shagginess of his script, is a solid if ...