All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 45
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Reviews
War (Vojna)
Dir: Jake Mahaffy. USA 2004. 84 mins.Virtually a one-man labour of love, Jake Mahaffy's War is one of those works that French critics sometimes term a 'UFO' - a film that comes out of nowhere, or comes direct and unmediated from its director's unconscious. Working over four years without no ...
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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
Anatomy Of Hell (Anatomie De L'Enfer)
Dir: Catherine Breillat France 2004. 77mins.Forthright French director Catherine Breillat made her international breakthrough in 1999 with Romance, the centrepiece of a retrospective at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Breillat has returned to Rotterdam to premiere her tenth film Anatomy Of Hell, which takes Romance's sexual explorations even further, into territory ...
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Reviews
La Chose Publique
Dir: Mathieu Amalric. France. 2003. 85minsAnd you thought they didn't make them like this any more' an old-fashioned political essay in film-on-film, the latest from director Mathieu Amalric - better known as an actor, though he does not cast himself here - wears its Godard influences proudly on its sleeve, ...
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Reviews
Coming And Going (Vai E Vem)
Dir: Joao Cesar Monteiro. Portugal. 2003. 179minsShown posthumously at Cannes out of competition following his death from cancer in February this year, Coming And Going is the epic final testament of Portuguese actor-director Joao Cesar Monteiro, who had some claim to being European cinema's single most eccentric talent. His films, ...
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Reviews
For She's A Jolly Good Fellow (Elle Est Des Notres)
Dir: Siegrid Alnoy. France. 2003. 100minsA portrait of a woman ' indeed, a society ' on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Siegrid Alnoy's debut feature is ostensibly a variation on a familiar topic, but quickly establishes its vision with steely confidence. Coolly inventive and rigorous, Alnoy's debut is likely ...
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Reviews
Playing 'In The Company Of Men' (En Jouant 'Dans La Compagnie Des Hommes')
Dir: Arnaud Desplechin. France. 2003. 118minsOne of France's more cerebral directors, Arnaud Desplechin has a reputation for risk-taking, as shown by his period drama Esther Kahn, which faced a prickly critical reception at Cannes in 2000. With his latest film, which played in Un Certain Regard, he has hardly gone ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story
Dir: Peter Greenaway. UK-Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2003. 126mins.Peter Greenaway's new trilogy The Tulse Luper Suitcases is merely the central element in a sprawling archipelago of a multi-media body of work. The project will take in film, TV, books, the internet and no less than 92 DVDs, each devoted to one of the ...
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Reviews
Gozu
Dir: Takashi Miike. Japan. 2003. 129minsAudiences never know quite what to expect from the indefatigably prolific Japanese oddball Takashi Miike: sometimes a couple of wildly inspired sequences will leaven a routine film, sometimes he relentlessly beats you into submission. With the barely-describable Gozu, however, Miike's crazed imagination delivers the goods ...
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Reviews
Kitchen Stories (Salmer Fra Kjokkenet)
Dir: Bent Hamer. Norway, 2003. 95minsA charmingly glum, low-key audience-pleaser, Norwegian comedy Kitchen Stories was always likely to be one of the sweeter features on offer at Cannes. Although its drily reserved Nordic humour never approaches the harder edges of, say, Aki Kaurismaki's comedies, it should appeal to anyone with ...
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Reviews
That Day (Ce Jour-La)
Dir: Raoul Ruiz. France-Switzerland. 2003. 105minsLong-term followers of the maverick Raoul Ruiz - or indeed, viewers who discovered him through his unlikely 2001 box-office hit Time Regained - are used to expecting the unexpected. But the Swiss-set That Day (Ce Jour-La) is unpredictable largely for being uncharacteristically predictable, even mechanical. ...
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Reviews
Young Adam
Dir: David Mackenzie. UK, 2003. 93mins.Scottish director David Mackenzie recently divided British critics with the release of his first feature, the rough-and-ready digital drama The Last Great Wilderness. His follow-up, Young Adam, is a more rigorous proposition that amply confirms Mackenzie's promise. A powerful, disturbing adaptation of the novel by ...
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Reviews
The Principles Of Lust
Dir: Penny Woolcock. UK. 2003. 105mins.A dark moral tale with a steely eye for life's nastier side, The Principles Of Lust is a compelling and discomforting narrative with intellectual ambitions only too rare in UK cinema. Its visual rawness, distinctly European feel and provocative subject matter will no doubt make ...
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Reviews
Noi The Albino (Noi Albinoi)
Dir: Dagur Kari. Ice-Ger-UK-Den. 2003. 95mins.Noi The Albino, the debut feature of young Icelandic director Dagur Kari, is one of those films that seem absolutely of their own place and yet curiously cosmopolitan. With its characteristically Nordic comic melancholia and strikingly photographed scenery, it could not have been made anywhere ...
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Reviews
Abouna (Our Father)
Dir: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Chad 2002. 81mins. An engaging, low-key coming-of-age story that rings the emotional changes with confidence elegance, the second feature from Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, the director of Bye Bye Africa, is a tender, accessible piece that has better prospects for wide exposure than any African feature in a long ...
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Reviews
Focus
Dir. Neal Slavin. US 2001 104 minutes.Based on Pulitzer Prize-wining playwright Arthur Miller's 1945 novel, Focus offers a timely, yet heavy-handed look at the paranoia, fear, and ignorance that fuels religious and racial intolerance. In light of the tragic events of September 11th and the subsequent attacks ...
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Reviews
L'Adversaire (The Adversary)
Dir: Nicole Garcia. France 2002. 120 mins.A slow, sombre drama about a mythomaniac in crisis, the latest film by actress-turned-director Nicole Garcia is a stolid effort that additionally suffers by covering too-familiar material. Its story is fundamentally the same as the one told by Laurent Cantet in his recent L'Emploi ...
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Reviews
El Bonaerense
Dir: Pablo Trapero. Argentina 2002. 92mins. The Buenos Aires police department comes under wry satirical scrutiny in the second feature by the director of the highly-acclaimed Mondo Grua (Crane World). The business of crime-fighting has rarely looked so farcically disreputable outside the Police Academy series, but the humour here is ...
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Reviews
A Piece Of Sky (Une Part Du Ciel)
Dir: Benedicte Lienard. Belgium-France-Luxembourg. 2002. 85mins.Defiantly out of step with the prevailing mood of the times, Une Part du Ciel makes no bones about its militant political stance nor about its intransigent art-cinema leanings. A story of two estranged female friends - one a factory worker, the other serving time ...
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Reviews
The Uncertainty Principle (O Principio Da Incerteza)
Dir: Manoel de Oliveira. Portugal 2002. 133mins. Nowadays more prolific than ever, 93-year-old Portuguese veteran Manoel de Oliveira continues to follow his own wildly idiosyncratic path. Although in many ways decorous, even a little staid in its composure, The Uncertainty Principle is overall a characteristically eccentric venture that is as ...