All articles by Benny Crick – Page 2
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Reviews
A Very Long Engagement (Un Long Dimanche De Fiancailles)
Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet.France. 2004. 134mins.A flamboyant mixture ofbattlefront spectacle, home front romance, revenge drama, and detective story 'Jean-Pierre Jeunet's first film since Amelie is all this and more.Cinematically bigger and dramatically richer than that phenomenally successful2001 monument of whimsy, A Very Long Engagement confirms Jeunet as amaster showman who has ...
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Reviews
They Came Back (Les Revenants)
Dir: Robin Campillo.France 2004. 105 mins.A thinking man's "horror"film, Les Revenants is an intriguing if dramatically muted Gallic"zombie" movie, in which terror, gore and SFX are replaced by an existentialconsideration of a "what if'" situation: what if the dead rose from theirgraves to cohabit - at first peacefully - with ...
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Reviews
Immortel (Ad Vitam)
Dir: Enki Bilal. Fr-UK-It. 2004 102 mins.A futuristic take on the Greek myth of Amphitryon, set in New York City in 2095, Immortel is the visually exciting third feature from Enki Bilal, the Belgrade-born artist who is one of the dominant figures in European comic strip art. Using a darkly ...
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Reviews
Podium
Dir: Yann Moix. 2004. France-Belgium 2004. 95 mins.A mild satire on the morbid contemporary phenomenon of pop celebrity cloning, Podium owes what energy it has to its Belgian star, Benoit Poelvoorde. Directed by Yann Moix, a former journalist who published the story as a best-selling novel in 2002, the film ...
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Reviews
Crimson Rivers 2: The Angels Of The Apocalypse (Rivieres Pourpres 2: Les Anges De L'Apocalypse)
Dir: Olivier Dahan. Fr-UK-It. 2004. 100mins.No, he's not the real thing, courtesy of Mel Gibson, but France still has its own screen Jesus figure this week, courtesy of Crimson Rivers 2: The Angels Of The Apocalypse. Here, the apostles all get killed off while 'the Christ' himself (or rather a ...
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Reviews
Blueberry
Dir: Jan Kounen. Fr-UK-Mex. 2004. 122 mins.Blueberry is not so much a Gallic makeover of the spaghetti western ' shot in Mexico ' as a feature-length commercial for Indian shamanism, a sort of special effects-driven Dances With Spirits, in which the audience is asked not so much to thrill to ...
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Reviews
Apres Vous
Dir: Pierre Salvadori. France. 2003. 110 mins.Smart, tart and winningly funny, Apres Vous... marks Pierre Salvadori's return to the front rank of French comedy writer-directors. Salvadori, who first attracted attention with Wild Target, a 1992 black comedy about a hit man (played by Jean Rochefort), made his real critical and ...
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Reviews
Not On the Mouth (Pas Sur La Bouche)
Dir: Alain Resnais. France-Switzerland. 2003 115 mins.Alain Resnais and humour make strange bedfellows and his new film is grounds for divorce: Not On The Mouth is a glossy but charmless adaptation of a comic operetta and the best argument do date for Resnais, the erstwhile icon of solemn art house ...
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Reviews
Michel Vaillant
Dir: Louis-Pascal CouvelaireLuc Besson is backseat driving again. The latest model to roll off his EuropaCorp action movie assembly line is called Michel Vaillant, the name of a champion race car driver who is indeed valiant on wheels or off but who won't keep the ghost of Steve McQueen up ...
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Reviews
France Boutique
Dir: Tonie Marshall, France. 2003, 95 min.After beauty parlours comes tele-marketing programmes. Tonie Marshall pursues the comic vision of French consumer society she deployed with wit and zest in her 1999 breakthrough hit, Venus Beauty Institute. But France Boutique, an inside look at a French tele-marketing and those who produce ...
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Reviews
Love Me If You Dare (Jeux D'Enfants)
France-Belgium. 2003. 93 mins.To rework an old Jean Cocteau pronouncement, just as there was painting before and after Picasso, there is French cinema before and after Amelie - as some local scribes are putting it with some alarm, there is the "Amelie Poulain-ization" of French movies. As evidence of this, ...
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Reviews
Ruby & Quentin (Tais-Toi!)
Dir Francis Veber, France-Italy. 2003 85 min.After a sociological satire that was only fitfully successful (The Closet), comedy maestro Francis Veber is back conducting the score that has become his signature: the male-bonding farce. The adventures of a dim-witted, ne'er-do-well robber and a vengeful, cold-blooded professional on the run both ...
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Reviews
Ruby & Quentin (Tais-Toi!)
Dir Francis Veber, France-Italy. 2003 85 min.After a sociological satire that was only fitfully successful (The Closet), comedy maestro Francis Veber is back conducting the score that has become his signature: the male-bonding farce. The adventures of a dim-witted, ne'er-do-well robber and a vengeful, cold-blooded professional on the run both ...
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Reviews
Bon Voyage
Dir: Jean-Paul Rappeneau. 2003. France. 114mins.Thirteen years after he adapted Jean Rostand's Cyrano De Bergerac and seven years after his swashbuckling take on Jean Giono's The Horseman On The Roof, Jean-Paul Rappeneau throws off the cultural shackles of the heritage feature and returns to his first love: the romantic adventure ...
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Reviews
Chouchou
Dir: Merzak Allouache. France. 105minsAfter nearly a decade of supporting roles in mostly indifferent French commercial pictures, Casablanca-born stand-up comic Gad Elmaleh at last makes his screen breakthrough in this serviceable self-devised screen vehicle. He plays a young Algerian trying to cope with life in Paris as an illegal immigrant ...
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Reviews
18 Years Later (18 Ans Apres)
Dir: Coline Serreau. France. 2003. 90 minsWith 18 Years Later, Coline Serreau has made a surprisingly bland follow-up to her 1985 comedy, Three Men And A Cradle, which mushroomed from sleeper into one of the most successful French films ever, registering 10.25m admissions and taking around $71.75m by today's standards, ...
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Reviews
The Housekeeper (Une Femme De Menage)
Dir: Claude Berri. France. 88 min.Wistful, wry and touching, The Housekeeper is a small but finely observed tale about a middle-aged man who takes on a young girl as a cleaning woman and gets more than he bargained for. Claude Berri closes out a fabulously successful year as France's leading ...
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Reviews
See How They Run (Embrassez Qui Vous Voudrez)
Dir: Michel Blanc. France. 103minsFrench comedy writer-actor Michel Blanc has struck critical and commercial pay dirt with his fourth directing effort in two decades. See How They Run is a darkly funny, sometimes farcical comedy of manners during a traditional summer holiday at the French seaside. Tart comic portraiture and ...
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Reviews
To Be And To Have (Etre Et Avoir)
Dir: Nicolas Philibert. France. 2002. 104mins.A film to play truant for, To Be And To Have is a warm, serene look at primary education in the French heartlands. This is the latest feature from leading French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, and it is a measure of his growing reputation that ...
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Reviews
The Red Siren
Dir: Olivier Megaton. France. 2002. 108 mins.A blandly conventional English-language actioner featuring good and bad mercenaries battling it out across Europe to retrieve a 12-year-old runaway, The Red Siren seems more like a spin-off of a Luc Besson formula thriller than a screen adaptation of a cult French suspense novel, ...
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