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Latest reviews – Page 386
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Reviews
I Served The King Of England (Obsluhoval Jsem Anglickeho Krale)
Dir: Jiri Menzel. Czech Rep-Slovak. 2007. 119mins. A likeable comic underdog saga that follows the life and loves of a Chaplinesque waiter in pre- and post-war Czechoslovakia, I Served the King of England represents veteran Czech director Jiri Menzel's most marketable feature for some time. The film's little-big-man protagonist and ...
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Reviews
Bordertown
Dir/scr: Gregory Nava. US. 2007. 112mins.In Bordertown, directed by Gregory Nava, Jennifer Lopez plays a Chicago reporter who speaks no Spanish, but goes undercover as a Mexican worker in a Juarez sweatshop to investigate the brutal murders of hundreds of women. If you can believe this, you can believe much ...
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Reviews
Ghost Rider
Dir/scr: Mark Steven Johnson. US. 2007. 108mins. Another lesser-known Marvel superhero gets his big-screen break in Ghost Rider, a silly but serviceable comic book adaptation with Nicolas Cage starring for Daredevil writer-director Mark Steven Johnson. The Columbia/Crystal Sky project could work well as a stopgap for those hardcore comic fans ...
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Reviews
Bridge To Terabithia
Dir: Gabor Csupo. US. 2007. 95mins. Walden Media's latest take on a children's literature classic, Bridge To Terabithia is an understated, touching and largely faithful version of Katherine Paterson's pre-teen novel. With animation artist Gabor Csupo making his live-action directing debut, the fantasy-adventure nicely captures the spirit of Paterson's boy-girl ...
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Reviews
Lost In Beijing (Ping Guo)
Dir. Li Yu. China. 2007. 112mins. A social satire with strong sexual undertones in its early reels, which switches as it progresses into a darker melodrama, Li Yu's new film offers another variant on the surrogate mother dilemma. Despite some hesitancies in the second half, it pulls through thanks to ...
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Reviews
Hallam Foe
Dir: David Mackenzie. UK. 2007. 96mins. In Hallam Foe, Jamie Bell continues to slough off the shadow of Billy Elliot, while director David Mackenzie (Young Adam) gets back on confident form after his unsteady psychodrama Asylum. But while it has panache to spare, this very Scottish coming-of-age story suffers from ...
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Reviews
Don't Touch The Axe (Ne Touchez Pas La Hache)
Dir: Jacques Rivette. Fr-It. 2007. 137mins Elegance, austerity, high seriousness, barbed wit: this heady combination might not be to everyone's taste, but anyone susceptible to literary costume drama at its most intellectually substantial will be bowled over by Don't Touch The Axe, Jacques Rivette's surprisingly faithful adaptation of Balzac's novel ...
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Reviews
Desert Dream (Hyazgar)
Dir. Zhang Lu. Kor-Fr. 2007. 123mins. The joint efforts of a Chinese director, a Franco-Korean production team and Mongolian locations results in Desert Dream, a kindly, well intentioned but over-extended allegory which spreads itself thinly over slightly more than two hours. Zhang Lu's follow-up to his festival hit Grain In ...
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Reviews
Yella
Dir/writer: Christian Petzold. Germany 2007.89 minsFor some, existential business-world drama Yella will be the proverbial mystery wrapped within a riddle wrapped within an enigma. But for audiences with a taste for intellectual stimulation, Christian Petzold's film will be an invigorating tease: its sheer originality and stylistic confidence certainly hit the ...
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Reviews
Beaufort
Dir: Joseph Cedar. Is. 2007. 120mins Based on an award-winning, best selling documentary book by journalist Ron Leshem about the last stand of an Israeli unit in Southern Lebanon before their retreat in 2000, Joseph Cedar's painful and highly relevant film adaptation, while not addressing directly last summer's renewed outbreak ...
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Reviews
Hot Fuzz
Dir: Edgar Wright. UK/USAt its best, Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's follow-up to Shaun Of The Dead, is wildly funny and very inventive. The film-makers take the conventions of the British cop drama and subvert them entirely. They relish combining gentle whimsy with hellzapopping violence. Their frame of ...
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Reviews
I Have Never Forgotten You ' The Life And Legacy Of Simon Wiesenthal
Dir: Richard Trank. US. 2007. 103mins.A worthy memorial to Simon Wiesenthal, a man who had become a legend in his own lifetime, the documentary I Have Never Forgotten You... displays all the admiration, affection and love be expected from a film produced by the centre bearing his name. Some revered ...
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Reviews
2 Days In Paris
Dir: Julie Delpy. France/Germany 2006. 96 mins.Yes, it's another film in which Julie Delpy walks around Paris with an American guy talking about relationships. But despite the surface similarities, the French actress-singer-scriptwriter's first commercial film as director (she herself has described her first feature, the no-budget Looking For Jimmy, as ...
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Reviews
Irina Palm
Dir: Sam Garbarski Bel-Ger-Lux-UK-Fr. 2007. 103mins It may be the work of a German-born, Belgian-based director, but Euro co-production Irina Palm is a thoroughly British film at heart - the latest in that 'naughty-but-nice' vein of stories that delight in placing genteel English matrons in risque situations. Sam Garbarski's film ...
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Reviews
The Walker
Dir. Paul Schrader, USA, 2007, English, 107 minutes, colour.Writer/director Paul Schrader has built The Walker around a gay man of style and superficiality (Woody Harrelson) who escorts rich Washington women to lunch and to the cultural events that their powerful husbands scorn. When a friend's lobbyist lover ends up dead, ...
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Reviews
Getting Home (Luo Ye Gui Gen)
Dir. Khang Yang. China, 2007. 97 min.A road movie is by definition a mixed bag of goods. It can be funny one minute and trite the next, alternately brilliant and awkward, changing nature and tone as it goes along. Zhang Yang's new film may not be an exception to this ...
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Reviews
The Other (El Otro)
Dir: Ariel Rotter. Argentina/France/Germany. 84 mins.A city lawyer's mid-life crisis becomes an existential odyssey in Ariel Rotter's second feature. Politely received at its Berlinale press showing, this competition entry is intriguing and thought-provoking without ever being truly involving. There is much to admire in the formal devices that the film ...
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Reviews
When A Man Falls In The Forest
Dir. Ryan Eslinger, USA, English, 90 minutes, colour.When a Man Falls In The Forest stars Sharon Stone and Timothy Hutton as middle-aged victims of monotony in their marriage and their work. Yet the real victim of monotony in Ryan Eslinger's second feature is the audience. The dull drama, developed at ...
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Reviews
Mein Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (Mein Fuhrer - Die Wirklich Wahrste Wahrheit Uber Adolf Hitler)
It's not quite The Great Dictator, nor Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be (nor even Mel Brooks's remake of it). But for audacity and good intentions at least, Dani Levy's Hitler comedy Mein Fuhrer belongs in a more honourable tradition than its buffoonish tone immediately suggests. Despite some hostile ...