All articles by Emanuel Levy – Page 2
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Reviews
Monster's Ball
Dir: Marc Forster. Us 2001. 110 mins.Monster's Ball, Marc Forster's follow-up to his digitally shot and experimental Everything Put Together, which made a splash at Sundance Festival two years ago, is a decent, well-intentioned interracial drama, substantially elevated by the performances of Billy Bob Thornton and particularly Halle Berry. ...
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Reviews
John Q
Dir: Nick Cassavetes. US 2002. 116mins.Socially relevant messages, simplistic action elements and teary melodramatic threads are manipulatively and unsuccessfully mixed in Nick Cassavetes' John Q, a film that tries to provide a "hard" look at an honest, working-class man, who loses control in his valiant effort to save his child's ...
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Reviews
Collateral Damage
Dir: Andrew Davis. US. 2002. 108mins.If it were not for the September 11 terrorist attacks, Collateral Damage - Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest action vehicle - would have been dismissed by critics as yet another popcorn picture, using terrorism as a cheap plot device to advance its gung-ho ...
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Reviews
One Hour Photo
Dir: Mark Romanek. US. 2002. 96 mins.Actor Robin Williams gets a wonderful opportunity to stretch (to use Hollywood jargon) in Mark Romanek's feature directorial debut, One Hour Photo, playing a serious dramatic role that deviates from the two screen images that have defined his career: as a funny, ...
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Reviews
Love Liza
Dir Todd Louiso. US 2002. 89mins.Indie icon Philip Seymour Hoffman (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) renders yet another stellar performance in Todd Louiso's delicately directed Love Liza, elevating the film way above its narrow narrative scope and small-scale production. An actor vehicle, written specifically for Hoffman by his older brother Gordy, ...
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Reviews
The Mothman Prophesies
Dir: Mark Pellington. US 2001. 119mins.In promoting its cliche-ridden sci-fi-horror-supernatural The Mothman Prophecies, Sony is using the tag line "based on true events", as if the "factuality" of the source material was a badge of honour and necessary condition for taking more seriously a decidedly schlocky and dismissable feature. ...
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Reviews
The Dancer Upstairs
Dir John Malkovich. US 2001. 134 mins.It's such a rarity nowadays to see an American film about explicitly political themes, and one set in a foreign country, that The Dancer Upstairs, John Malkovich's honourable feature directorial debut, deserves extra credit for its ambitious scope and for being made in the ...
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Reviews
The Laramie Project
Dir Moises Kaufman. US 2001. 94 mins.Although well-intentioned and dealing with the socially relevant issues of hate crimes and gay-bashing, Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project is a disappointing film from an artistic standpoint. Developed (at the Sundance Institute) and performed all over the US as a theatre ...
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Reviews
The Good Girl
Dir: Miguel Arteta. US 2001. 93mins.The Good Girl, Miguel Arteta's third feature, represents a step in the right direction for him as a filmmaker, as well as for his star, Jennifer Aniston, best known so far for her part in the TV series Friends. Centring on a thirtysomething woman ...
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Reviews
Gerry
Dir: Gus Van Sant. US-UK. 2001. 103mins.After reaching the nadir of his career with the pointless remake of Psycho, followed by mainstream Hollywood fare Finding Forrester, an old-fashioned star vehicle for Sean Connery, Gus Van Sant goes back to his independent roots with Gerry, a visually compelling road movie that ...
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Reviews
The Shipping News
Dir Lasse Hallstrom. US 2001. 111mins.What has happened to the singular vision of Lasse Hallstrom, so clearly evident in his Swedish (My Life As A Dog) and first American film (What's Eating Gilbert Grape')' The Shipping News, his third consecutive film for Miramax, propagates the same compassionate humanism that defined ...
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News
Black Hawk Down
Dir Ridley Scott. US 2001. 148mins.Although visually awesome in its gritty, ultra-realistic portrait of men in combat, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down highlights what's wrong with most Hollywood pictures even when they're superbly realised. Too many films suffer from a lack of coherent narrative and an absence of emotionally engaging ...
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Reviews
Ali
Dir: Michael Mann. US 2001. 159mins.The challenge of how to present dramatically the life of Muhammad Ali, arguably the most recognisable and flamboyant celebrity of the 20th century, is only partially met in Michael Mann's Ali. An ambitious but flawed film, it narrowly focuses on one decade in ...
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Reviews
2001: The Film Year in Review
There were few great films in 2001, but enough good ones by new (Todd Field), developing (Peter Jackson,Baz Luhrmann), and veteran (Lynch, Altman) directors, to make the year moreagreeable. With most studio releases slipshod and slapdash, the interestingfilms were easily evident on first viewing. Hence, choosing the best was notdifficult, ...
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Reviews
Vanilla Sky
Dir Cameron Crowe. US 2001. 136 mins.Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky provides a classic case study of what happens when a mainstream studio, Paramount, and a major Hollywood star, Tom Cruise, take a terrifically-executed Spanish thriller, Open Your Eyes, and turn it into a spectacularly glossy, big-budget, effects-ridden star vehicle that's ...
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Reviews
Iris
Dir Richard Eyre. UK-US.2001. 90 mins.Viewers expecting to get illuminating insights about the literary genius, eccentric philosophy, and complex sexuality of Iris Murdoch, the British celeb of letters who died in 1999, will be disappointed with Richard Eyre’s Iris, a minor, rambling film, almost made-to-order for the dictates of the ...
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Reviews'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring': Review
Dir Peter Jackson. US.2001. 179 min.Visually striking, thematically grave, and morally weighty, Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, is a miracle of a movie: a three-hour fantasy-action-adventure that not only faithfully captures the spirit of its respectable source material, the ...
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Reviews
Ocean's Eleven
Dir Steven Soderbergh.US. 2001. 116 min.Steven Soderbergh's astonishing artistic renewal, that began three years ago with Out Of Sight and The Limey, and reached anunprecedented height last year with Erin Brockovich (for which he received a directing Oscar nomination) and Traffic (which landed him the coveted prize), begins to show ...
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Reviews
The Affair Of The Necklace
Dir. Charles Shyer. US 2001. 117mins.Much of the dramatic juice and historical intrigue has been drained out of The Affair Of The Necklace, an old-fashioned costume drama that suffers from being stiff, stuffy and banal. In her first major role after a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for Boys Don't ...