All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 44
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Reviews
With Blood On My Hands ' Pusher II (Pusher II)
Dir/scr: Nicolas Winding Refn. Den. 2004. 96minsAfter Pusher and Bleeder,Nicolas Winding Refn's third low-life drama could easily have been called Loser,with its portrait of a small-time thug on the skids. Going back to realistroots after a bold detour with the US-set existential thriller Fear X,Denmark's Refn offers his most confident ...
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Reviews
The Forest For The Trees (Der Wald Vor Lauter Baumen)
Dir:Maren Ade. Ger. 2003. 81minsA sober psychological drama about a novice teacher in meltdown, Maren Ade'slow-budget The Forest for the Trees builds slowly but assuredly toproduce an unsettling final kick. An introverted but commanding lead performanceby Eva Lobau should put her name on the map, as well as that of ...
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Reviews
As It Is In Heaven (Sa Som I Himmelen)
Dir/scr: Kay Pollak.Sweden-Denmark. 2004. 130minsSweden's entry in theforthcoming Academy Awards, As It Is In Heaven is an accomplishedcrowd-pleaser, and surely a front runner for this year's Film Most Likely To BeRemade By Hollywood.A tragi-comic musical romancethat shamelessly but efficiently tugs the heartstrings, the determinedlymiddle-brow offering represents a comeback for veteran ...
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Reviews
Melinda And Melinda
Dir: Woody Allen, US2004. 99 mins After a run of lightweight comedies that caused evenhardcore supporters to lose patience, Woody Allen achieves a heartening returnto form with his most idiosyncratic and substantial film in some time. Agenuine tragi-comedy - in that it counterpoints two parallel stories, tragicand comic - Melinda ...
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Reviews
Layer Cake
Dir:Matthew Vaughn. UK 2004. 100minsTrue,the directing debut of Matthew Vaughn - who made his name as producer of GuyRitchie's crime capers - is indeed a British gangland thriller. But it carriesfew traces of the saloon-bar jokiness that was Ritchie's trademark in Lock,Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Although slick ...
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Reviews
Nelly (A Ce Soir)
Dir: Laure Duthilleul.Fr. 2004. 94mins.The complaint isfrequently made that the French production system too often allows film-makersto please themselves rather than justify their intentions to an audience. Thisis a charge unfortunately born out by Nelly, a small, eccentric dramathat was clearly a labour of love for director Laure Duthilleul, but ...
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Reviews
Right Now (A Tout De Suite)
Dir/scr:Benoit Jacquot. France. 2004. 95minsBenoitJacquot's Right Now contains a series of incidents rather than what onemight usually call a story - which hits just the right note for this study of ayoung woman drifting without a compass through a tumultuous period of her life.Based on events that happened to Elisabeth ...
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Reviews
Our Music (Notre Musique)
Dir/scr: Jean-Luc Godard. France 2004. 80minsA characteristically encyclopaedic disquisition onwords, images and war, the latest essay-fiction from Jean-Luc Godard is notobviously as visually striking as its predecessor, Eloge De l'Amour, andis considerably more dense verbally. But this three-parter shows Godard to beas perplexing and provocative as ever.Undoubtedly it will appeal ...
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Reviews
Schizo (Shiza)
Dir: Guka OmarovaRuss-Kazahkstan-Fr-Ger. 2004. 90mins.Don't be fooled by themisleading English title, already used by at least two slasher pics. Kazhakfeature Schizo is a terse but gripping, elegantly crafted slice ofrealist drama, with an edge of low-life thriller. Evoking the desperate mood ofsubsistence-level life in the newly-independent Kazhakstan of the early ...
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Reviews
The Ordeal (Calvaire)
Dir: Fabrice du Welz. Fr-Bel-Lux. 2004. 90mins.Callinga film The Ordeal is surely asking for trouble, and this unforgivingexercise in Belgian Gothic is undeniably a rough ride for the faint of heart.However, anyone receptive to macabre psycho-horror with a distinct streak ofblack humour will find much to relish.Pitchedbetween Euro art-thriller and ...
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Reviews
Welcome To Switzerland (Bienvenue En Suisse)
Dir/scr:Lea Fazer. Fr-Switz. 2004. 107mins.Awould-be crowd-pleasing comedy, Lea Fazer's one-joke comedy of culturalmisunderstandings squanders a talented cast and quickly wears out its welcome.Ahighly inappropriate selection to open the Un Certain Regard section at Cannesthis year, the film is too broad to appeal on the festival circuit, and is tooculturally specific ...
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Reviews
After We're Gone (En Attendant Le Deluge)
Dir/scr: Damien Odoul. France. 2004. 80minsCannes simply would not be Cannes without at least onehighly-rated French auteur coming a cropper. This year it was the turn ofDamien Odoul, who made a dazzling debut in 2000 with Le Souffle, adream-like rural coming-of-age drama.Havinglost momentum with his prestigiously cast follow-up L'Errance, Odoul ...
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Reviews
Clean
Dir/scr: Olivier Assayas.France/Canada 2004. 80 mins.Like his film's heroine,French director Olivier Assayas returns to the straight and narrow in Clean,an emotionally fluent drama that is a world removed from his last film, theexperimental cyber-thriller Demonlover. Another predominantlyEnglish-language venture, Clean sees Assayas working again with Asianstar and ex-wife Maggie Cheung for ...
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Reviews
House Of Flying Daggers
Dir/scr: ZhangYimou. Chi-HK. 2004. 119minsBeyond a doubt the mostvisually ravishing film on offer at Cannes this year, Zhang Yimou's return tothe sword-fighting genre - following last year's Hero - mixes action,romance and a touch of dance to uneven but often thrilling effect.Acquired by Sony PicturesClassics in the US, the film ...
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Reviews
The Holy Girl (La Nina Santa)
Dir/scr.Lucrecia Martel Arg-Spain-It. 2004. 106minsThecombination of Catholic anxiety and female sexual awakening is hardly a novelone in auteur cinema, but it receives an idiosyncratically oblique treatment inThe Holy Girl. Director-writer Lucrecia Martel made her name with debut TheSwamp (La Cienaga), which marked her out as a central figure of thenew ...
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Reviews
The Consequences Of Love (Las Consecuencias Del Amor)
Dir/scr:Paolo Sorrentino, Italy. 2004. 100minsAn ice-coolexistential drama neatly poised on the borderline of thriller territory, PaoloSorrentino's elegant second feature marks the Neapolitan writer-director assomeone who knows just how to impose an individual stamp on idiosyncraticmaterial. A hyper-stylised, often slyly witty portrait of a loner in crisis,the film possibly gestures in ...
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Reviews
En Route (Unterwegs)
Dir: Jan Kruger. Germany 2004. 80mins.A psychological road movie in which an outsider opens up tensions within a holidaying family, Jan Kruger's low-key but absorbing drama won one of the three Tiger Awards at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. It should bring further plaudits to the young German director, whose ...
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Reviews
Peep 'TV' Show
Dir: Yutaka Tsuchiya. Japan 2004. 98mins.A portrait of alienated cyber-youth, Peep 'TV' Show is so much of the moment - so hyperbolically trendy, even - that it risks becoming dated overnight. But as a fiction with a quasi-documentary flavour, Yukata Tsuchiya's panorama of a voyeuristic technological culture makes for revealing ...
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Reviews
Aaltra
Directors: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Belgium. 2004. 90 mins.Tell people that a festival's hot ticket is a black-and-white Belgian road comedy, and you're liable to be greeted with scepticism, especially when the protagonists are two middle-aged men in wheelchairs. Nevertheless, Aaltra is this year's surprise delight at Rotterdam (where it ...
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Reviews
Asshak, Tales From The Sahara (Asshak, Geschichte Aus Der Sahara)
Dir: Ulrike Koch. Switzerland/Germany/Netherlands 2004. 110mins.Effectively an ethnographic documentary reinforced with a slender strand of narrative, Asshak is a generally engrossing portrait of the customs and beliefs of the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara. Given the current favour for films with an ethnographic and environmental slant, notably The Story Of ...