All articles by Emanuel Levy – Page 5
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Reviews
Late Marriage
Directed by Dover Kosashvili. Israel-France 2001. 103 minsTelling an extremely powerful story of family tyranny and intergenerational conflict within Israel's Georgian-Jewish community, Late Marriage represents the impressive feature debut of Dover Kosashvili, who, at this phase, acquits himself more honorably as an astute writer than competent director. A highlight of ...
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Reviews
Baby Boy
Dir: John Singleton. US. 2001. 130 mins.The innersoul of a young, immature black man is placed under scrutiny in JohnSingleton's Baby Boy, a companion piece but not a sequel, to his breakthrough film,Boyz N' The Hood,which exactly ten years ago made a splash in the film world. Revisiting thesame ...
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Reviews
The Fast And The Furious
Dir: Rob Cohen. US. 2001. 108 mins.From the first frame to the last, Rob Cohen's The Fast And The Furious is a B- movie, elevated by A-level stunt work and roaring cars that test the limit, but dragged down to C-level characterisation with a formulaic plot and schematic hero, anti-hero ...
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Reviews
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Dir: Steven Spielberg.US. 2001. 144 minAlways captivating towatch, and often emotionally touching, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: ArtificialIntelligence is one of hismost ambitious, intelligent, and problematic films, and not only due to itsvaliant effort to blend two disparate cinematic sensibilities. Easily thissummer's most eagerly awaited movie, A.I. qualifies as a media ...
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Reviews
No Such Thing
Dir: Hal Hartley. US 2001. 101 mins.Instead of arresting a downward spiralling career, No Such Thing, Hal Hartley's new film and latest folly, demonstrates what happens to an iconoclastic film-maker when he neglects his instinctive talent for small, quirky, offbeat films and decides to go uproariously big. Indeed, a ...
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Reviews
Storytelling
Dir: Todd Solondz. US. 2001. 87 mins.The same darkly humorous sensibility that defined Todd Solondz's earlier pictures is at work in his new satire, Storytelling, except that the novelty has worn out and the notoriously acerbic vision is now contained in a deliberately fractured narrative that leaves a lot to ...
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Reviews
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Directed by Simon West. US 2001. 120 mins.Displaying boobs, brawn, and brain (in this order), Angelina Jolie renders such a splashy performance in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that she not only elevates the video-game turned big-screen adventure a notch or two above its routine storyline, but also makes the entire ...
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Reviews
Swordfish
Directed by Dominic Sena. US 2001. 100 mins.After a couple of major flops (Battleship Earth, Lucky Numbers), John Travolta is again in top form as the morally ambiguous protagonist of the techno thriller, Swordfish, playing a dangerously charismatic spy who propagates his own brand of patriotism. Boasting a sleek look ...
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Reviews
Human Nature
Directed by Michel Gondry. US-France. 96 mins."Civilization and Its Discontents," Freud's well-known treatise about the eternal conflict between biology and sociology, could have served as the subtitle for the droll, often clever Human Nature, Charlie Kaufman's follow-up script to his celebrated Oscar-nominated film, Being John Malkovich. As staged by ...
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Reviews
Pearl Harbor
Dir: Michael Bay. US.2001. 182 mins.The best that can besaid about Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, his colossal take on one of the most tumultuous events of Americanhistory, is that it's decidedly not a popcorn summer movie in the currentsense. Quite the opposite: Deviating from the recent spate of postmodern,intentionally anachronistic ...
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Reviews
Angel Eyes
Dir: Luis Mandoki. US 2001. 115 mins.A muddled blend of a supernatural thriller, romantic melodrama, and urban police-crimer, Angel Eyes, Jennifer Lopez' latest disappointing star vehicle, tries to do too much to little effect. Lifting a number of ideas and characters from Ghost and City Of Angels, ...
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Reviews
Apocalypse Now Redux
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola. US 2001. 197 min (without credits). Apocalypse Now Redux, Francis Ford Coppola's expanded and definitive version of his dazzling 1979 war epic, reaffirms its status as one of the highlights of the new American cinema and one of Coppola's undisputed masterpieces, along with The Godfather movies. ...
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Reviews
Shrek
Dirs: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. US. 2001. 90 mins.Shrek, DreamWorks' new enchanting animated feature, provides constant delights for the eye, while never neglecting the mind. The first American animation to receive its premiere as a competition entry at the Cannes Festival in half-a-century (since Peter Pan), Shrek represents a ...
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Reviews
The Man Who Wasn't There
Dir: Joel Coen. US. 2001. 117 mins.With their latest foray into film noir, Joel and Ethan Coen continue to explore a recurrent motif of their work: The destructive force of unbridled individualism, or more specifically, greed as the dark side of the American Dream. Arguably their most ambitious film since ...
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News
Lacklustre Cannes festival leaves d'Or still ajar
At its exact midway point, with only five more days to go, the 54th edition of the Cannes Film Festival registers as a solid but not particularly exciting programme. No major discoveries, no artistic breakouts, not many commercial hits -- not even real controversies or scandals to stir festival watchers ...
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Reviews
Luhrmann's Sensory Overload
Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Australia/US. 2001. 124 minAussie wonder boy Baz Luhrmann continues to break rules and to shock in his new tragi-comic musical, Moulin Rouge his most audaciously innovative feature to date. Like his stylized dance melodrama Strictly Ballroom and his postmodern Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, the new musical, ...
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Reviews
Moulin Rouge
Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Australia/US. 2001. 124 minAussie wonder boy Baz Luhrmann continues to break rules and to shock in his new tragi-comic musical, Moulin Rouge his most audaciously innovative feature to date. Like his stylized dance melodrama Strictly Ballroom and his postmodern Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, the new musical, ...
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Reviews
The Brothers
Dir: Gary Hardwick. US. 2001. 98mins.Writer-director Gary Hardwick has dubbed The Brothers, his serio-comedy about sex, love and friendship among African-American men, 'Refusing To Exhale'. Considering the theme and tone of his movie, it is an apt label that plays upon Waiting To Exhale, the 1995 film about black middle-class ...
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Reviews
Blow
Dir: Ted Demme. US. 2001. 120mins.Using Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling masterpiece about the porn industry as a model, Ted Demme's Blow is a solid but unexciting epic about the rise of the US cocaine subculture, told through real-life figure George Jung (now in jail). Johnny Depp gives a ...
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News
Heartbreakers
Dir: David Mirkin. US. 2001. 123mins.The only contribution, and it's a dubious one, that David Mirkin makes in his mildly amusing comedy, Heartbreakers, is to feminise con artists, a perennially male profession in American movies. The regal Sigourney Weaver and the sexy Jennifer Love Hewitt play a consummate mother-daughter team ...