All articles by Emanuel Levy – Page 4
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Reviews
Delbaran
Dir: Abolfazl Jailili. Iran/Japan 2001. 96mins Socially poignant and often visually poetic, Delbaran, the new Iranian film from the gifted helmer Abolfazl Jailili, was one of Locarno Festival's few undisputed artistic highlights. Continuing the tradition of recent Iranian films about children, the story centres on a 14-year-old Afghan refugee, caught ...
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Reviews
Mostly Martha
Dir: Sandra Nettelbeck. Germany. 2001. 107 mins.German 'food' melodrama Mostly Martha may be utterly predictable but it was one of the few world premieres at the Locarno Film Festival which showed strong potential to break out of the festival circuit and European arthouse markets. Set mainly in the kitchen of ...
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Reviews
The Lawless Heart
Dirs: Neil Hunter and Tom Hunslinger. UK. 2001. 99 min.A middlebrow sensibility informs The Lawless Heart, a soft, mildly enjoyable melodrama about a web of tangled, constantly shifting relationships among the residents of a small, provincial English town. NeilHunter and Tom Hunslinger, who earlier made the 1995 gay film, Boyfriends, ...
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Reviews
The Cat's Meow
Dir: Peter Bogdanovich. Germany-UK. 2001. 111 mins.Despite some moments of nasty, old-fashioned fun and a shining performance by Kirsten Dunst (pictured), The Cat's Meow, Peter Bogdanovich's eagerly awaited comebackafter close to a decade without a theatrical feature to his name, is a disappointment. Assuming the shape of a trashy Sunday ...
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Reviews
The Others
Dir Alejandro Amenabar. US-Spain. 2001. 103 minsSumptuously crafted, with moody eeriness and almost surreal visual imagery, Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is a terrific supernatural thriller that builds and sustains its considerable suspense, without ever relying on violence or special effects. Cast in a role she was born to ...
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Reviews
The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion
Dir: Woody Allen. US. 2001. 103 min.Far superior to hisprevious comic crime capers (Manhattan Murder Mystery and last year's Small Time Crooks), Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is an entertaining period piece, poking fun at the hypnosis craze that mesmerized people of the Jazz Era and continues ...
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News
WIDE ANGLE: Are critics still critical'
Abstracted from the weekly edition of Screen International Everyone's a critic these days - including Harvey Weinstein. The Miramax co-chairman felt the urge recently to write into the Los Angeles Times in praise of Steven Spielberg's A.I. a film he feels fully deserves all the plaudits thrown its way by ...
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News
Locarno competition favours debut directors
In her first year as Locarno International Film Festival's new artistic director, Irene Bignardi has shown strong commitment to fresh and young cinema. Almost in diametric opposition to the Cannes festival's latest edition, which displayed the work of veteran auteurs, such as Manuel de Oliveira, Shohei Imamura, Jacques Rivette and ...
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Reviews
The Princess Diaries
Dir: Garry Marshall. US.2001. 115 mins.Shot on the same soundstage that was used for Mary Poppins, the Disney comedy that catapulted Julie Andrews to international stardom, The Princess Diaries is an enjoyable fairy tale that in its mores andmessage is not that different from that Andrews' 1964 Oscar-winning picture. This ...
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Reviews
Rush Hour 2
Dir: Brett Ratner. US. 2001. 87 min.Neither terribly exciting asan actioner, nor sufficiently funny as a comedy, Rush Hour 2 re-teams the odd couple of the first film, theendlessly bickering Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, placing them in the most routineand movie-ish situations imaginable. Coldly calculated, but still rather flat,the ...
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Reviews
Planet Of The Apes
Dir: Tim Burton. US.2001. 120 min.Tim Burton's singularcinematic vision is very much missing from Planet Of The Apes, his eagerly-awaited remake of the 1968 cultclassic. Part sci-fi, part action-adventure, part ape/human romantic melodrama,but not particularly satisfying on any of these levels, it's a truly mediocrepicture that suffers in several departments: ...
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Reviews
Ghost World
Dir: Terry Zwigoff. US.2001. 111 min.Documentarian Terry Zwigoff,who directed the superlative Crumb,a highlight of American documentary cinema of the past decade, makes a roughtransition into feature filmmaking with Ghost World, yet another tale of how the mediocrity of Americansuburbanism can almost suffocate the individuality of its few, truly creativedenizens. Based ...
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Reviews
Jurassic Park III
Dir: Joe Johnston. US.2001. 90 min.Continuing to expand theboundaries of tech- nology, rather than exciting entertainment, Jurassic ParkIII, the franchise's thirdinstallment, builds on Spielberg's dual hits, Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), which jointly have grossed over $1.5billion worldwide. Much darker than the previous films, Jurassic ...
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Reviews
Made
Dir: Jon Favreau. US.2001. 93 min.The same offbeatsensibility that informed Swingers, Miramax's 1996 hit, is also in evidence in Made, the new crime comedy directed, written, andstarring Jon Favreau - except that, unlike the former picture, which dealt withreal issues, the new one is a basically plotless, character-driven film.Reuniting for ...
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Reviews
Bully
Dir: Larry Clark. US. 2001. 110 mins.In his third feature, Bully, legendary photographer-turned-director LarryClark continues to explore the same issues he had tackled in his controversialdebut, Kids, a cause celebre that led Miramax to briefly create a new divisionjust for its release. As written by Zachary Long and Roger Pullis, ...
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Reviews
The Score
Dir: Frank Oz. US. 2001.122 mins.Despite a high-calibre cast, headed by three of the most accomplished actors working in American film - Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton - not many sparks fly in The Score, an extremely old-fashioned heist thriller that looks and sounds as if it were ...
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Reviews
Legally Blonde
Dir: Robert Luketic. US. 2001. 97 mins.Slick, sexy andwinsome, Legally Blonde isa lot of fun and a rare sight this summer: A feel-good movie that's notentirely frivolous. A logical follow-up to Election, in which Reese Witherspoon played an obnoxiouslyambitious high-schooler, the new comedy casts her as a ditzy but smart ...
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Reviews
An American Rhapsody
Dir: Eva Gardos. US. 2001. 106 mins.An ode to America as the land of freedom and opportunity, Eva Gardos' An American Rhapsody relates a heartfelt coming-of-age story, centring on a bright Hungarian-American adolescent (magnificently embodied by Manny & Lo discovery Scarlett Johansson), who insists on determining her own fate against ...
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Reviews
Big Bad Love
Directed by Arliss Howard. US. 2001. 121 min.Severely flawed in both dramatic and cinematic ways, Big Bad Love, the feature directorial debut from actor Arliss Howard, is an ambitious film about a Vietnam vet (played by Howard), who's trying to create fiction from his troubled past and regain control over ...