Latest reviews – Page 404
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Reviews
Transylvania
France. 2006. 103mins. Director, screenplay Tony GatlifIn Transylvania cult diva Asia Argentotakes to the agitated universe of Romany film-maker Tony Gatliflike a duck to water. The latestof French-based Gatlif's ventures into the world ofGypsy and Eastern European culture, Transylvania is at once romance,road movie, ethnological celebration, and vehicle for the ...
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Reviews
Re-Cycle
Directed by Danny & Oxide Pang. HongKong/Thailand 2006. 108 mins.ThisLin Sinjee vehicle is a calling card for the FarEastern special effects industry, creating a persuasively dark Alice Through the Looking Glass parallel universe with shadesof Terry Gilliam, Spirited Away and What Dreams May Come. Butthemoody fright-power of the Pang brothers' ...
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Reviews
Buenos Aires 1977
Dir:Israel Adrian Caetano,Argentina. 2006. 102minsBased on a true story set in 1970s Argentina,Israel Adrian Caetano’s Bueno Aires 1977(Cronaca De Una Fuga) is a familiar story of a prison break-out told infamiliar terms.Snapped up at Cannes by TheWeinstein Company for the US, whereit opens in January 2007, and Australasia, the film ...
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Reviews
The Break-Up
Dir: Peyton Reed. US. 2006. 107mins.Poor star chemistry and a screenplay without a first act - and not much of a final one, either - turn this highly anticipated romantic comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston into a keen disappointment. But the film has so far proved critic-proof. Thanks ...
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Reviews
Colossal Youth
Dir: Pedro Costa. Portugal/France/Switzerland 2006. 155 mins Without a doubt the most difficult film in this year's Cannes competition - where it provoked more walk-outs than any other film - Pedro Costa's hyper-austere Colossal Youth at least deserves some recognition and respect. While the film admittedly seems inert for ...
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Reviews
Cars
Exquisitelycrafted and warmly emotional, Cars isanother dazzling display Of computer animation from the apparently infalliblepeople at Pixar, this one telling its tale with a cast of cleverly humanisedautomobiles. The commercialprospects are certainly very strong, but the company's latest comedy adventure maynot be quite as sure a thing as Pixar's track ...
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Reviews
Clerks II
If it ain'tbroke, milk it, as they say in Hollywood. So why did New Jersey homeboyKevin Smith wait all of 12 years before returning to the successfulsmall-town-buddies formula of his cult debut, Clerks' True, Smith has done stridentvariations on the theme - Mallrats -and lame spin-offs - Jay and Silent ...
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Reviews
The Omen
Dir: JohnMoore. US. 2006. 106 minutes.More thanany other genre, horror film remakes can hew extremely closely to the plot ofthe original. Such is certainly the case with The Omen, John Moore's retread of director Richard Donner's 1976 chiller about the devil incarnate that also triesto by and large replicate much ...
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Reviews
Babel
Asingle gun shot reverberates around the world in Babel, unexpectedly uniting disparate lives in Morocco, Mexico and Japan. Thethird collaboration between director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu andscreenwriter Guillermo Arriaga initially seems to lack the bravura edge ofCannes discovery Amores Perros or the soulfulintensity of 21 Grams but it matures into amelancholy ...
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Reviews
Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto Del Fauno)
Dir: Guillermo del Toro. Spain / Mexico.2006. 112 mins
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Reviews
The Singer (Quand J'Etais Chanteur)
Sadsongs say so much in The Singer, an unashamedlysentimental love story that features one of Gerard Depardieu's most fully-realisedand endearing performances in recent years. Hismelancholy, smalltime singer has the same weary charm as Burt Lancaster's ageinghood in Atlantic City. Depardieu is well matched by Cecile de France andtogether they transcend ...
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Reviews
The Singer (Quand J'Etais Chanteur)
Sadsongs say so much in The Singer, an unashamedlysentimental love story that features one of Gerard Depardieu's most fully-realisedand endearing performances in recent years. Hismelancholy, smalltime singer has the same weary charm as Burt Lancaster's ageinghood in Atlantic City. Depardieu is well matched by Cecile de France andtogether they transcend ...
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Reviews
The Singer (Quand J'Etais Chanteur)
Sadsongs say so much in Quand j'Etais Chanteur, an unashamedlysentimental love story that features one of Gerard Depardieu's most fully-realisedand endearing performances in recent years. Hismelancholy, smalltime singer has the same weary charm as Burt Lancaster's ageinghood in Atlantic City. Depardieu is well matched by Cecile de France andtogether they ...
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Reviews
Flandres
War isgrim; so is life in rural Flanders. That'sthe message most audiences are going to take from Bruno Dumont's love letter - oris it hate mail - to the area of north-eastern France where the director of L'Humanitewas born and still lives. Criticalreaction after Flandres' Cannes competition screeningwas split (as ...
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Reviews
Selon Charlie
Tomake another Short Cuts without the spirit of Raymond Carver and the touch of Robert Altman isjust too much of a challenge for this darkly handsome but overlong,melodramatic and ultimately tedious Cannes competition effort, which pretendsto discuss the mystery of human nature, using an anonymous provincial town onthe Atlantic coast ...
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Reviews
Jindabyne
Dir: Ray Lawrence. Australia. 2006. 123 minsIn a time of uncertainty or crisis, the only things you can cling on to are personal integrity and a sense of community. That is the hard lesson learnt by the residents of Jindabyne in director Ray Lawrence's haunting companion piece to his award-winning ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Right Of The Weakest (La Raison Du Plus Faible)
Dir, scr: Lucas Belvaux. Belgium/France 2006. 116 minsA Belgian proletarian caper movie is hardly the first thing anyone expected from Lucas Belvaux, whose Trilogy, a set of three interlocking features, was an audacious formal anomaly in recent French mainstream cinema. The Right Of The Weakest lies halfway between working-class realism ...
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Reviews
The Family Friend (L'Amico Di Famiglia)
Dir, Scr: Paolo Sorrentino. Italy/France 2006. 110 mins A generally unsurprising Cannes competition received an invigorating blast of invention with The Family Friend, a stylish, dark but sometimes perplexing third feature from Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino.The story of a thoroughly grumpy old loanshark, this philosophical black comedy sets itself the ...