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Latest reviews – Page 406
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Reviews
The Da Vinci Code
Dir: Ron Howard. US.2006. 152 mins.If Dan Brown's soaraway bestseller The Da Vinci Code wasclumsily written but a page-turning guilty pleasure, Ron Howard's film versionis well-made but chronically devoid of the guilty pleasures it needs to make itsucceed as first-rate popcorn entertainment. Howard and screenwriter AkivaGoldsman have remained rigidly faithful ...
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Reviews
An Inconvenient Truth
Dir: Davis Guggenheim. US. 2006.98mins"I'm Al Gore. I used to be the next president of theUnited States... I don't find that particularly funny," former vice-presidentAl Gore declares early on in Davis Guggenheim's fascinating documentary,bounding on stage before one of his multi-media lectures about global warming.Gore is a contradictoryfigure, aloof and ...
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Reviews
Just My Luck
Dir: Donald Petrie. US.2006. 103mins.Apparently designed to help teen queen Lindsay Lohan, Just My Luck ends up feeling like a teenromantic comedy not very convincingly dressed in adult clothes. Lohan's existing fan-base may still respond to the mix oflifestyle aspiration and fairy-tale romance, and the appearance of real-lifepop-rock group McFly ...
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Reviews
Fresh Air (Friss Levego)
Dir: Agnes Kocsis. Hung. 2006. 109mins.Critics and arthouseaudiences should welcome Fresh Air, adeliberately slow and sombre study from first-time Hungarian director Agnes Kocsis. It will strike many as more than a littlereminiscent of Keren Yedaya'sOr, which won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2004 when it played in Un Certain ...
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Reviews
Anche Libero Va Bene
Dir: Kim Rossi Stuart. It. 2006.104mins.Though it breaks no new ground, Anche Libero VaBene, Italian actor Kim Rossi Stuart'sdirectorial debut, restates the child's eye-view of family strife with suchemotional truth that it feels fresh.The film spends little timetrying to look pretty, and its kitchen-sink aesthetics, together with its deliberately untouristy ...
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Reviews
Fifty Pills
Dir: Theo Avgerinos. US, 2006.90mins.Fifty Pills is a low-budgetindependent cousin of broad college comedies from the studio world like Road Trip or Van Wilder. Instead of a lush California campus, the indie version has grimy street-bound New York. Instead ofcheating in exams or losing one's virginity, the challenge is to ...
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Reviews
Boy Culture
Dir: Q Allan Brocka. US. 2006. 88mins.A slick slice of gay American life which begins incynical posturing and ends in sweet romance, Boy Culture is already one of the gay festival season's talkingpoints. Filled with the hot guys and wise-ass dialogue that are customary intoday's knowing same-sex celluloid, it has ...
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Reviews
Over The Hedge
Dirs: Tim Johnson, KareyKirkpatrick. US. 2006. 87mins.Cute animals and energetic slapstick make up for anoverly generic storyline in Over The Hedge, DreamWorks Animation's entry in this year'scrowded field of computer-animated family movies. Younger kids should certainlyrespond to the impressively realised creatures and the rambunctious physicalcomedy, but teens and parents (even ...
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Reviews
Hoot
Dir: Wil Shriner. US. 2006. 88mins.Parents craving wholesome children's entertainmentthat promotes environmental conservation might find Hoot acceptable summer fare for the little ones. But this blandfamily film, which is released in the US on May 5, never generates muchinterest in either its human or animal participants.Strategicallypositioned between the mid-April release ...
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Reviews
The Night Of The White Pants
Dir: Amy Talkington. US. 2006. 90mins.Dallas native Amy Talkingtonmakes a largely entertaining feature debut with The Night Of The White Pants, a frenetic dysfunctionalfamily comedy whose best shot at attracting commercial attention is through itslikeable cast.Set during one night inDallas, it does not cohere as tightly as this brand of ...
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Reviews
Walker Payne
Dir: Matt Williams. US. 2006. 113mins.Like a lovingly-crafted curio from another era, Walker Payne is a leisurely-paced perioddrama which defies current storytelling trends to remain resolutely classicalin style and form. Coming off like a cross between Hallmark Hall Of Fame and Amores Perros, if that can be imagined, it faces ...
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Reviews
Confetti
Dir: Debbie Isitt. UK.2006. 100mins.A good-natured but uneven farce, Debbie Isitt's Confettipokes fun at the marriage industry, using a mockumentarystructure borrowed from Christopher Guest's BestIn Show - but with engaged couples instead of dogsin the limelight. Meanwhile, the deadpan humour and low-key acting style aredistinctively British, with a cast that ...
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Reviews
Lonely Hearts
Dir/scr: Todd Robinson. US. 2006. 100mins.Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez, otherwise known asthe "Lonely Hearts Killers", return foranother adaptation of their sex, murder and mayhem saga, which delighted theAmerican tabloids during the late 1940s before their eventual executions in1951. Neither as shocking nor as decadent and perverse as its two ...
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Reviews
New York Waiting
Dir: Joachim Heden. Swe. 2006.96mins.There is little new or of interest in New York Waiting, a modest romanticcomedy from newcomer Jonathan Heden - save that despiteits Stateside location, everyone behind the camera isSwedish.The English-language story mostlytakes place in Manhattan during one summer day and night, and shares theenthusiasm of all ...
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Reviews
The TV Set
Dir: Jake Kasdan. US. 2006. 87mins.One of the early highlights of the Tribeca Film Festival, Jake Kasdan'sThe TV Set is a short, sharpinsider's view of US network television. Boasting a fine cast led by David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver, the latter giving a tastyturn as the atrociously manipulative network president, ...
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Reviews
Mission: Impossible III
Dir: JJ Abrams. US. 2005. 125mins.The Mission:Impossible franchise comes full circle and returns to its TV origins withthe frenetic third film directed by small-screen icon JJ Abrams,whose series like Lost and Alias have resuscitated longform drama on the US networks. Like a souped-up $150m episode of Alias, the film is ...
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Reviews
The Groomsmen
Dir/scr: Edward Burns. US. 2006. 93minsEdward Burns delivers anotherbitter-sweet romantic comedy with TheGroomsmen - but whatever freshness marked him out as a promising newcomerin The Brothers McCullen(1995) seems to have pretty much evaporated by now.What's left is anotherroutine job relying on well-established formulae, with Burns again taking leadrole and embarking ...
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Reviews
The Bridge
Dir: Eric Steel. US. 2006.93mins.Somewhere between a painful human issue piece and acalculated gamble as regards its potential to touch a large audience, EricSteel's debut documentary The Bridgetreads dangerous ground.Inspired by an article in The NewYorker about the pull of the Golden Gate Bridge for would-be suicides,Steel stationed two cameras ...
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Reviews
Times And Winds (Bes Vakit)
Dir/scr: Reha Erdem. Turk.2006. 110mins.Looking every inch the festival warhorse, Times And Winds,Reha Erdem's contemplativeobservation on life in a remote Anatolian village, is the kind of picture criticswill adore and film events queue for.Subdued, low key andpractically plotless - it is reminiscent of both Ki-duk'sSpring, Summer, Fall, Winter' And Spring,if ...
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Reviews
Times And Winds (Bes Vakit)
Dir/scr: Reha Erdem. Turk.2006. 110mins.Looking every inch the festival warhorse, Times And Winds,Reha Erdem's contemplativeobservation on life in a remote Anatolian village, is the kind of picture criticswill adore and film events queue for.Subdued, low key andpractically plotless - it is reminiscent of both Ki-duk'sSpring, Summer, Fall, Winter' And Spring,if ...