Latest reviews – Page 384

  • Reviews

    Gone (aka Middle Of Nowhere)

    2007-03-08T00:01:00Z

    Dir: Ringan Ledwidge. UK-Aust. 2006. 88mins Young British travellers should steer well clear of the Australian Outback. Having suffered at the hands of a deranged and sadistic bushman in Greg McLean's ferociously unpleasant Wolf Creek, the Brits Down Under are again put through the wringer in Gone. Like Wolf Creek, ...

  • Reviews

    Dr Plonk

    2007-03-07T11:40:00Z

    Dir/scr: Rolf De Heer. Aust. 2007. 84mins Rolf De Heer, perhaps relaxing from the extreme directorial hardships of last year's Ten Canoes and the grim themes of The Tracker (2002) and Alexandra's Project (2003), has with Dr Plonk produced a featherweight comic curiosity. The result is a silent, monochromatic, fixed-camera ...

  • Reviews

    Men In The Nude (Ferfiakt)

    2007-03-06T14:45:00Z

    Dir/scr: Karoly Esztergalyos. Hung. 2006. 94mins. A gay affair between an aging writer and a streetwise hustler who exploits him, Men In The Nude is a midlife crisis drama that seems tailored for the gay market but is not quite certain how comfortably it will fit in this niche. Old-fashioned ...

  • Reviews

    The Lark Farm (La Masseria Delle Allodole)

    2007-03-06T14:37:00Z

    Dirs: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani. It-Bul-Sp-Fr. 2007. 117mins. It's a shame that the first straight historical feature to deal with the Armenian genocide of 1915 is such a poor film. The theme (already dealt with in several documentaries and Atom Egoyan's tricksy Ararat) deserves a better platform than this melodrama ...

  • Reviews

    Iska's Journey (Iszka Utazasa)

    2007-03-06T14:31:00Z

    Dir/scr: Csaba Bollok. Hung. 2007. 94mins.Built around the innocently luminous face of Maria Varga, Csaba Bollok's drama Iska's Journey often has the weight of a painful, heartbreaking documentary. While some of the last act scripting tends to mar the earlier authenticity, it is still powerful enough to justify its Berlin ...

  • Reviews

    Celebration

    2007-03-06T13:56:00Z

    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 ...

  • Reviews

    Happy New Life (Boldog Uj Elet)

    2007-03-06T13:49:00Z

    Dir/scr: Arpad Bogdan. Hung. 2007. 81mins There is nothing happy, little new and almost no life in Arpad Bogdan's debut feature Happy New Life. A moody piece shot mostly in saturated colours, with sporadic flashbacks in lighter tones, it showcases a distinct visual talent, a strong tendency for use of ...

  • Reviews

    Goodbye, Southern City (Proschai, Yuzhnyi Gorod)

    2007-03-02T16:39:00Z

    Dir: Oleg Safaraliyev. Azer-Russ. 2007. 90mins. Enjoying plenty of local colour but little else, Goodbye, Southern City, a modest Azeri film noir shot entirely in Baku, will be limited to those interested in the region or expatriates. For others it will look like a sincere, heartfelt but misguided elegy of ...

  • Reviews

    Ad Lib Night (Aju Teukbyeolhan Sonnim)

    2007-03-02T16:28:00Z

    Dir: Lee Yoon-ki. S Kor. 2006. 99mins. Korean film-maker Lee Yoon-ki seems obsessed with female solitude and dysfunctional families. After This Charming Girl and Love Talk, he revisists the theme with Ad Lib Night, a film shot so much in close-ups that it could have been made anywhere, so little ...

  • Reviews

    Opium: Diary Of A Madwoman (Opium: Egy Elmebeteg No Naploja)

    2007-03-02T15:48:00Z

    Dir. Janos Szasz. Hung-Ger. 2007. 108mins. A decade after the adaptation of The Wittman Boys (1997) which delved with a vengeance into the evil lurking behind childhood innocence, Janos Szasz goes back to the diaries of same writer, Geza Csath, and comes up with the cinematic equivalent of an Edgar ...

  • Reviews

    Confession Of Pain (Seung sing)

    2007-03-02T15:18:00Z

    Dirs: Andrew Lau, Alan Mak. HK. 2006. 116mins. The Infernal Affairs trilogy - and Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake, The Departed - turned Andrew Lau and Alan Mak into the golden boys of Hong Kong cinema. The directing duo followed up with the enjoyably lightweight teen racer yarn Initial D, which ...

  • Reviews

    Dark Matter

    2007-02-28T15:41:00Z

    Dir. Chen Shi-Zheng. 2007. US. 88mins Dark Matter follows a promising Chinese science student as he falls short of his expectations while studying in the United States and spirals into depression as he fears disappointing the parents who sacrificed everything to send their son to an American university. The talented ...

  • Reviews

    Anna M

    2007-02-28T15:24:00Z

    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 ...

  • Reviews

    Spider Lilies (Ci-Qing)

    2007-02-28T15:19:00Z

    Dir/scr: Zero Chou. Tai. 2007. 97mins. Tempering the transgressive spirit of Almodovar with the innocent fantasies of Taiwanese teen melodrama, the girl-on-girl romance Spider Lilies is a watchable but rather lightweight follow-up to Zero Chou's well-received 2004 debut Splendid Float.With its casting of Taiwanese pop icon and TV personality Rainie ...

  • Reviews

    Lady Chatterley

    2007-02-28T15:15:00Z

    Dir: Pascale Ferran.Fr-Bel. 2006. 168mins. Lady Chatterley sees Pascale Ferran deliver a coolly elegant new screen take on DH Lawrence's once notorious novel about a high-born woman's adulterous affair with a commoner. It forgoes the book's obscene language and graphic sexual realism for a more contemplative drama of sex, love, ...

  • Reviews

    Lucky Miles

    2007-02-27T06:55:00Z

    Dir: Michael James Rowland. Aus. 2007. 105mins. The debut feature from Michael James Rowland, Lucky Miles follows a boatload of asylum seekers cynically dumped on the vast, barely inhabited West Australian coast. Scenically, it's terrific, with gorgeous sunsets and a rich gallery of inhospitable terrains; dramatically, it's less satisfying, for ...

  • Reviews

    Shotgun Stories

    2007-02-27T06:55:00Z

    Dir/scr: Jeff Nichols. US. 2007. 93mins. A measured and sobering meditation on violence and discontent, distilled through a blood feud that ruptures two clans of half-brothers, Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories is a highly intelligent and accomplished first feature that makes palpable suffering, loss and the wanton destructiveness of vengeance. Inexplicably ...

  • Reviews

    Itty Bitty Titty Committee

    2007-02-27T06:55:00Z

    Dir: Jamie Babbit. US. 2007. 85mins. Naive and over-didactic, but still brimming with infectious energy and a sense of mission that's hard to hate, Jamie Babbit's third feature serves up radical lesbian feminism in teen-movie sauce. Actually, teens are generally more mature than this; Itty Bitty Titty Committee is like ...

  • Reviews

    Sakuran

    2007-02-27T06:55:00Z

    Dir: Mika Ninagawa. Jap. 2007. 111mins. Call it lush, sumptuous, a symphony of colours, a cinematographer's cherry blossom dream: Mika Ninagawa's directorial debut Sakuran leaves no doubt about her background. An enormously successful photographer, her first film looks exactly like something she would have concocted in the privacy of her ...

  • Reviews

    Armin

    2007-02-27T06:55:00Z

    Dir/scr: Ognjen Svilicic. Cro-Ger-Bos. 2007. 82mins.A low-key Balkan film may seem like a contradiction in terms, given the ebullient energy of the cinema produced in that part of the world, but there is no better way to describe Ognjen Svilicic's second feature. Something of a surprise after his raucous debut ...