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Latest reviews – Page 376
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Reviews
No Reservations
Dir: Scott Hicks. US. 2007. 101mins.No Reservations is the lighter, blander Hollywood version of Mostly Martha (Drei Sterne), the 2001 German-language romantic dramedy about love, food and family. The adjusted tone and the star power of leads Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart will certainly suit the remake's domestic positioning as ...
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Reviews
Rocket Science
Dir: Jeffrey Blitz. US. 2007. 98mins.After the success of his Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, writer-director Jeffrey Blitz takes a shaky first step into features with Rocket Science. A deadpan high-school comedy about a misfit trying fruitlessly to court the object of his affection, this indie-minded effort suggests a film-maker too enamored ...
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Reviews
Death At A Funeral
Dir. Frank Oz. UK. 2007. 90mins.Death At A Funeral reprises the old formula of assembling a raucous ensemble comedy from the mourners at a respectable upper middle-class funeral that comes unwound. Dysfunction becomes delirium, fuelled here by hallucinogens and the dead man's gay lover, a dwarf. The bawdy farce then ...
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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
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Dir: Dennis Dugan. US. 2007. 115mins.Tiptoeing carefully around the touchy subject of gay marriage, Adam Sandler farce I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry turns out to be a pretty inoffensive but not terrifically funny buddy comedy that slips its vague pleas for lifestyle tolerance in between bursts of the ...
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Reviews
Hairspray
Dir. Adam Shankman. US. 107mins.As an adaptation of an adaptation, Hairspray beats the odds against turning a musical based on a film into a credible movie, with a punchy cast that delivers the musical numbers without sacrificing the comedy. The score also ups the ante with new numbers added to ...
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Reviews
Teddy Bear (Medvidek)
Dir. Jan Hrebejk. Czech Rep. 2007. 98mins.Unquestionably the leading exponent of modern Czech comedy of manners, Jan Hrebejk returns with Teddy Bear, dabbling again with the morals of his contemporaries in a picture that has a good chance of being dubbed by many as The Czech Chill. Comparisons to Lawrence ...
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Reviews
Empties (Vratne Lahve)
Dir. Jan Sverak. Czech Rep-UK. 104mins.A smash hit in the Czech Republic, drawing more than 1m admissions since its March release, the latest collaboration between director Jan Sverak, his actor-director father Zdenek Sverak and British producer Eric Abraham looks poised for a career similar to previous venture Dark Blue World: ...
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Reviews
Simple Things (Prostyje Vesci)
Dir. Alexey Popogrebsky. Russ, 2007. 108mins.Flying solo for the first time after the resounding success of his debut Koktebel (directed with Boris Khlebnikov), Alexey Popogrebsky has opted for an intimate, closely observed story with Simple Things which, just as its title indicates, refrains from more ambitious metaphors and prefers to ...
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Reviews
The Art Of Negative Thinking (Kunsten A Tenke Negativt)
Dir. Bard Breien. Nor. 2007. 79mins.The script Bard Breien wrote for The Art of Negative Thinking, blackly comic debut, may have been intended for the screen, but it could work as well, if not even better, on the stage. Dealing with the type of material that Scandinavian cinema seems unusually ...
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Reviews
Jar City (Myrin)
Dir. Baltasar Kormakur. Ice-Ger. 2007. 93mins.It starts with the death of a little girl and it ends in a cemetery. In between these grim bookends, Jar City, Baltasar Kormakur's remarkable new whodunit, forges pitilessly ahead, through a maze of facts systematically unearthed one after the other, to reveal not only ...
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Reviews
The Champagne Spy (Meragel Hashampaniya)
Dir. Nadav Schirman. Is. 2007. 90mins.If the first requisite for a good documentary is a darn good yarn, then Nadav Schirman couldn't have asked for anything better than with The Champagne Spy, a tale of intrigue, espionage, love, betrayal, glamour and misery based on a true story that is begging ...
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Reviews
Conversation With My Gardener (Dialogue Avec Mon Jardinier)
Dir. Jean Becker. France, 2007. 109mins.A pleasant talkathon featuring a successful painter relocating to the country estate of his late parents and the gardener he hires, Conversation With My Gardener is the kind of film that veteran director Jean Becker should be capable of directing with one hand tied behind ...
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Reviews
Licence To Wed
Dir: Ken Kwapis. US. 2007. 90mins.Two up-and-coming stars get left at the cinematic altar in License To Wed, a badly strained romantic comedy with enough plot contrivances to fill a reception hall. In a supporting role, Robin Williams delivers a (relatively) toned-down performance, but this bit of summer counter-programming lacks ...
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Reviews
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Dir: David Yates. US/UK. 2007. 138 mins.The choice of celebrated UK TV director David Yates to take on the fifth in the Harry Potter series proved a wise one for producer David Heyman and Warner Bros. Yates ramps up the adrenalin and menace while adding new layers of emotional anguish ...
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Reviews
Kings
Dir: Tom Collins. Ire-UK. 91mins.A melancholy drama of Irish displacement, Kings has 'based on a stage play' written all over it. Not only in a negative sense: this study of the unfulfilled hopes, dreams and promises of five friends who moved to London from the west of Ireland years before ...
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Reviews
Kremen
Dir: Aleksei Mizgiryov. Russ. 2007. 83mins.Perhaps the Taormina festival catalogue errs a little on the side of enthusiasm in comparing Aleksei Mizgiryov's debut feature Kremen to Taxi Driver. But there is something in the claim: like Scorsese's classic, this is a tale of a disturbed, asocial innocent with a rigid ...
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Reviews
Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free Or Die Hard)
Dir: Len Wiseman. US. 2007. 129mins'You're a Timex watch in a digital age'. So says the smooth master criminal pitted against Bruce Willis' action-hero cop John McClane in Die Hard 4.0 (known as Live Free Or Die Hard in the US), the much anticipated fourth instalment of the franchise. The ...
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Reviews
Man Of Glass (Uomo Di Vetro)
Dir: Stefano Incerti. It. 2007. 96mins.A worthy addition to the modern canon of Italian mafia films, Man Of Glass tells the true story of Leonardo Vitale, the first Sicilian mafioso to turn state's evidence and reveal the inner workings of the powerful Palermo branch of Cosa Nostra. Like The Hundred ...
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Reviews
Talk To Me
Dir: Kasi Lemons. US. 2007. 115mins.A tasty performance by Don Cheadle and a nice evocation of late-sixties black America are the heart and soul of Talk To Me, director Kasi Lemmons' enjoyable period drama about real-life Washington DC deejay-activist Petey Greene Jr. The Sidney Kimmel Entertainment production could prove a ...