All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 40
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Reviews
The Substitute (Vikaren)
Dir: Ole Bornedal. Denmark. 2007. 89minsAll children know that teachers are weird, but what if some of them turned out to be really weird - extra-terrestrially weird' This serviceable premise has yielded entertaining dividends before - notably in Robert Rodriguez's 1998 teen chiller The Faculty - and Danish spoof scarer ...
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Reviews
You, The Living
Dir/scr: Roy Andersson. Swe-Ger-Fr-Den-Nor. 2007. 94minsOne of European cinema's most distinctive stylists, and darkest humourists, returns with another tragi-comic panorama of the human condition in You, the Living. The fourth feature from Sweden's Roy Andersson is remarkably close in tone and style to Songs From the Second Floor, which won ...
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Reviews
Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (Bunt: Delo Litvinenko)
Dir/scr: Andrei Nekrasov. Ger. 2007. 113mins.A political hot potato dropped into the Cannes official selection at the last moment, Andrei Nekrasov's Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case is likely to spark more news stories than it answers questions.The highly polemical film covers the political context behind the lethal poisoning in London last ...
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Reviews
The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse)
Dir: Catherine Breillat. Fr-It. 2007. 114minsSeasoned provocatrice Catherine Breillat puts a predictably louche spin on the costume drama genre in An Old Mistress, her adaptation of an 1851 novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Well known for her sexually explicit and intellectually confrontational dramas such as Romance and Anatomy Of Hell, ...
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Reviews
Promise Me This (Promets-moi)
Dir: Emir Kusturica. Fr-Serb. 2007. 140mins'Never knowingly understated' continues to be the motto of Serbian madcap director Emir Kusturica. All the usual ingredients are present in Promise Me This, the latest knockabout episode of Emir's Balkan Follies - manic overacting, slapstick, wildly cartoonish characters and the usual menagerie of hapless ...
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Reviews
Chop Shop
Dir: Ramin Bahrani. US. 2007. 84 mins A flawlessly observed piece of street realism, and an unforgiving parable of American economic reality, Chop Shop is a compelling follow-up to Man Push Cart, Ramin Bahrani's 2005 debut. Using a non-professional cast to convincingly natural effect, the film follows in the tradition ...
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Reviews
Go Go Tales
Dir/scr: Abel Ferrara. It/US. 2007. 96 mins Abel Ferrara , king of New York low-life drama, slips into more benign mode than usual with Go Go Tales, a good-natured but somewhat half-baked evocation of life backstage at a lap dancing club. The ensemble comedy, with its decided stylistic debt to ...
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Reviews
Magnus
Dir/scr: Kadri Kousaar. Est/UK 2007. 86 mins Seamy low life, chic depression and off-the-wall humour make a heady if uneven mixture in the debut feature by Estonia's Kadri Kousaar. Magnus presents a morose, sometimes blackly witty view of life in contemporary Estonia from the point of view of a suicidal ...
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Reviews
The 11th Hour
Dir: Leila Conners Petersen & Nadia Conners. USA . 2007. 91 mins.Leonardo DiCaprio discreetly lends his weight as star and environmental campaigner to The 11th Hour, an unashamedly polemical documentary cum call-to-arms about the current dire state of the ecology - and future prospects for change. The film makes a ...
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Reviews
Water Lilies (Naissance des Pieuvres)
Dir/scr: Celine Sciamma. France 2007. 85 mins Every Cannes festival brings at least one sexually delicate French coming-of-age drama, and while Water Lilies is hardly mould-breaking, it's certainly an affecting and more than competent addition to the genre. Set against the eccentric background of synchronised swimming, Celine Sciamma's debut is ...
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Reviews
Love Songs (Les Chansons d'Amour)
Dir/scr: Christophe Honore Fr. 2007. 95 mins The genre of the realist-inflected arthouse musical has intermittently thrived in France , ever since it was kick-started by Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Papapluies de Cherbourg). It's an institution that ambitious French directors have returned to with regularity, with even ...
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Reviews
Celebration
Dir: Olivier Meyrou. Fr. 2007. 74mins. A fashion-world documentary resolutely stripped of frills, Olivier Meyrou's Celebration is a portrait of haute couture legend Yves Saint-Laurent unplugged, as it were - some might even say, unstitched. Perhaps too distant from its subject to qualify exactly as a warts-and-all portrait, Meyrou's film ...
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Reviews
Anna M
Dir/scr: Michel Spinosa. Fr. 2007. 106mins. Whether or not it's clinically accurate - and it certainly has a plausible ring - stalker study Anna M tightens the psychological screws to compelling effect. Michel Spinosa's drama about a young woman in the throes of a morbid passion may be a touch ...
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Reviews
The Unpolished (Die Unerzogenen)
Dir: Pia Marais. Ger. 2007. 95mins The perils and occasional benefits of growing up bohemian are subtly and wryly evoked in The Unpolished, a confident debut feature from German director Pia Marais which premiered in Rotterdam, where it was one of the Tiger Award winners. An elliptical, somewhat dreamlike narrative, ...
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Reviews
Good Morning, Mister Grothe (Guten Morgen, Herr Grothe)
Dir: Lars Kraume. Ger. 2007. 90mins Despite promising, tense beginnings, classroom tensions fail to provide much in the way of social or emotional revelation in Good Morning, Mister Grothe. Despite strong lead performances, this story of a teacher and a problem pupil going head to head finally veers uneasily between ...
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Reviews
Angel
Dir: François Ozon. Fr-UK-Bel. 2007. 137mins They don't make 'em like this any more - but just try telling that to François Ozon, whose Angel is a determinedly old-fashioned English costume melodrama of the sort that once would have been a cast-iron vehicle for the likes of Bette Davis. Based ...
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Reviews
Hallam Foe
Dir: David Mackenzie. UK. 2007. 96mins. In Hallam Foe, Jamie Bell continues to slough off the shadow of Billy Elliot, while director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) gets back on confident form after his unsteady psychodrama Asylum. But while it has panache to spare, this very Scottish coming-of-age story suffers from ...
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Reviews
Don't Touch The Axe (Ne Touchez Pas La Hache)
Dir: Jacques Rivette. Fr-It. 2007. 137mins Elegance, austerity, high seriousness, barbed wit: this heady combination might not be to everyone's taste, but anyone susceptible to literary costume drama at its most intellectually substantial will be bowled over by Don't Touch The Axe, Jacques Rivette's surprisingly faithful adaptation of Balzac's novel ...