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Latest reviews – Page 380
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Reviews
Breath (Soom)
Dir/scr: Kim Ki-Duk. Kor. 2007. 84 mins. Removing any pretence of reality for yet another of his existentialist essays on human nature, Kim Ki-Duk's bare-boned new film pairs a married woman with a man on death row, for an impossible love affair. But as this is, after all, Kim Ki-Duk ...
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Reviews
Savage Grace
Dir: Tom Kalin. US. 2007. 87 mins Fifteen years after his eye-catching debut Swoon, Tom Kalin returns with a second feature that also addresses a story of true-life transgression and its lethal consequences. The inspiration this time is the rise and demise of 1940s socialite Barbara Daly and the increasingly ...
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Reviews
Terror's Advocate (L'Avocat du terreur)
Dir: Barbet Schroeder Fr. 2007. 135 mins Renewing his fascination with monsters of modern times, Barbet Schroeder has created a weighty, wide-ranging portrait of devil's advocate Jacques Verges. It could also stand as a complex guide through the rise and rise of global terrorism. The controversial subject matter and Schroeder's ...
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Reviews
Sicko
Dir: Michael Moore. US. 2007. 123 mins. If it works, don't fix it. Michael Moore's passionate, bullying, gag-laced approach to the 'j'accuse' documentary worked a treat in Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 9/11 - and it works even better in Sicko, his investigation of the US public healthcare system. Moore ...
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Reviews
Boarding Gate
Dir/scr: Oliver Assayas. Fr. 2007. 106mins. Maverick French director Oliver Assayas gets lost in transit with Boarding Gate, a transglobal thriller of dirty business deals and dirty sex that he has previously mined in Demonlover, with equally underwhelming results. Cannes ' out-of-competition 'Midnight Screening' is generally reserved for films that ...
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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
Triangle (Tit Samgok)
Dirs: Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, Johnnie To. HK-Chi. HK-Chi. 2007. 100mins.Not so much a portmanteau film as a cinematic relay race, Triangle sees three leading Hong Kong directors, each with their own team of scriptwiters, taking on three successive parts of a single thriller. Though it's a fascinating experiment, the ...
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Reviews
The Banishment (Izgnanie)
Dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev. 2007. Russ. 150minsThe Banishment struggles to carry the burden of expectations surrounding the second feature from writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev. Like his Venice Golden Lion winner The Return, it offers a tale of pride and patriarchy illuminating the dark soul of the Russian male. It confirms Zvyagintsev as ...
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Reviews
Flight Of The Red Balloon (Le Voyage Du Ballon Rouge)
Ostensibly an homage to the fifty years old classic The Red Balloon, this is the kind of tribute that only Hou Hsiao Hsien would devise for his first fully French-speaking and produced picture. Albert Lamorisse's lyrical, dialogue-less half hour survey of Paris in the fifties, in which the director followed ...
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Reviews
4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile)
Dir: Cristian Mungiu. Rom. 2007. 113 minsA deceptively simple tale carrying a tremendous wallop, Cristian Mungiu's third feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days leads the new Romanian cinema into this year's Cannes competition with flying colours. The market may not be bowled over at first sight - after ...
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Reviews
My Blueberry Nights
Dir: Wong Kar Wai. 2007. US. 111mins Life is as plaintive and banal as a country western ballad in My Blueberry Nights. Wong Kar Wai's English-language debut may have all the trappings of an American road movie but at the core it is a characteristically dreamy exploration of love, loss ...
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Reviews
Georgia Rule
Dir: Garry Marshall. US. 2007. 111mins.Georgia Rule is a comedy about women that comes with stars and a mighty promise -that honesty and humor can heal the most bitter rifts that fray mother-daughter bonds over three generations. The film, written and directed by men, aims at a trans-generational market of ...
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Reviews
West 32nd
Dir: Michael Kang. US. 2007. 83mins. Michael Kang's second feature West 32nd is an ambitious thriller set in the Korean underworld of Manhattan. While rich in atmosphere and a set-up which promises to peel the layers off a sinister world of crime, it ultimately promises more intrigue and complexity than ...
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Reviews
Rise: Blood Hunter
Dir: Sebastian Gutierrez. US. 2007. 94mins.A genre thriller without much of a bite, Rise: Blood Hunter is nevertheless a well-mounted affair with a sense of humour and a solid starring turn by Lucy Liu as a woman who finds herself among the living dead. Premiered at Tribeca recently and opening ...
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Reviews
Shrek The Third
Dir: Chris Miller. US. 2007. 92mins. The 'greatest fairy tale never told' (as the original tag line put it) is missing a bit of its magic in this, the DreamWorks Animation CG fable about the big green ogre and his oddly familiar friends. With a new director and writers but ...
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Reviews
28 Weeks Later
Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. UK-US-Sp. 2007. 100mins. 28 Weeks Later is superior genre fare, directed and performed with such gusto that you scarcely notice its creaks. Atmospheric and creepy production design, excellent use of London locations and a succession of bloodcurdling chase sequences keep the tempo high, even as the ...
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Reviews
The Matrimony (Xin Zhong You Gui)
Dir: Teng Huatao. Chi. 2007. 90mins.Produced by the brothers Wang - China's answer to the Weinsteins - and released in Mainland China on Valentine's Day, The Matrimony was just pipped to the post by Li Shaohong's The Door (which hit cinemas on 18 January) for the title of 'China's first ...