![Benjamin Kramer Headshot Photo Credit_CAA[40][40]](https://d1nslcd7m2225b.cloudfront.net/Pictures/274x183/6/6/4/1455664_benjaminkramerheadshotphotocredit_caa4040_107707.jpeg)
Latest reviews – Page 411
-
Reviews
A Soap (En Soap)
Dir: Pernille Fischer Christensen. Denmark. 2006. 104mins.A woman's picture by definition, ASoap, Pernille Fischer Christensen's auspiciousdebut, should play well with female audiences who will appreciate its intimatesensitivities.Portraying a woman who breaks out of a stagnating relationship and hertranssexual neighbour, the script has the earmarks of the TV soaps it emulates,while ...
-
Reviews
Container
Dir: Lukas Moodysson. Sweden. 2006. 74mins. Wilfully obscure and defiantly strange, Lukas Moodysson'sblack-and-white film is as much visual art as cinema. Moodysson would havelittle patience with such subjective categories; but distributors are notoriouslysubjective, and few will touch a film that lacks even the narrative or shock ofMoodysson's previous departure from ...
-
Reviews
Candy
Dir: Neil Armfield. Australia.2006. 108minsAlternately dazzling andflashy, affecting and mannered, this impressive debut from feted Australiantheatre director Neil Armfield is lifted to the verge of excellence byoutstanding performances from Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as a pair ofheroin addicts in love. If it doesn't quite scalethe final peak, it's because ...
-
Reviews
The Road To Guantanamo
Dirs: Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross. UK. 2006.95mins Michael Winterbottom's reputation as afiercely enterprising and provocative film-maker gets another boost from TheRoad To Guantanamo, co-directed with Mat Whitecross, his editor on 9 Songs.Thedigitally-shot film is a docudrama-style reconstruction of the fate of a groupof young British Muslims who went to Afghanistan ...
-
Reviews
Freedomland
Dir: Joe Roth. US. 2006.113mins. Trying to streamline andilluminate Freedomland, Richard Price's panoramic 1998 novel,studio executive Joe Roth is working beyond his range, temperament andsensibility.Unlike other directors whohave adapted the works of Price Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Philip Kaufman,John McNaughton Roth is not a natural or ...
-
Reviews
V For Vendetta
Dir:James McTeigue UK-Ger. 133mins.Thelatest Alan Moore graphic novel adaptation, after From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta has A for Auxiliarywritten all over it.It allstarts promisingly enough, with sombre chords and a vintage, black-and-white WarnerBros logo ushering us into a dark vision of a totalitarian Britain ...
-
Reviews
El Custodio
Dir:Rodrigo Moreno. Arg/Ger/Fr. 100 mins.ElCustodio did nothing to satisfy festivalBerlinale audiences hungry for a little light entertainment. This study of anArgentinian government minister's police minder is painfully slow, taking allof 90 minutes to build to its first, and last, moment of real action. But itis also a strangely compelling exercise ...
-
Reviews
The Elementary Particles
Dir: Oskar Roehler.Germany. 2006. 105mins.Oskar Roehler's The Elementary Particles proves again thefolly of trying to adapt the blatantly unadaptable.Based on French writer Michel Houellebecq's brilliantdisturbing novel about two half-brothers who find love, only for it to besnatched from them, it will disappoint the author's many fans. Houellebecq's novel is, of ...
-
Reviews
Grbavica
Dir: Jasmila Zbanic. Aus-Ger-Bosna-Herz-Cro. 2006. 90mins.The recent past looms dark and fearsome over Jasmila Zbanic’s debut feature Grbavica, set in a suburb which witnessed some of the worst massacres of the 1990s Balkan war.Whatever its weaknesses, this coming-of-age story about a teenager and her relationship with her single mother succeeds ...
-
Reviews
Slumming
Dir: Michael Glawogger. Aust, 2006. 96mins.Michael Glawogger's Slumminghas something of The Edukators about it, and something ofMike Leigh's Naked: it's about blind existentialrage, arrogant male ennui and what happens when schoolboy pranks turn nasty.But it is not didactic: if anything, Glawogger trustshis own creative instinct too much in this story ...
-
Reviews
A Prairie Home Companion
Dir: RobertAltman. US. 2006. 103 mins. RobertAltman's homage to America's favourite radio show, Garrison Keillor's APrairie Home Companion, is a largely spirited affair, despitea few sagging moments. Paradoxically, though, the film may play better in Europeand other territories than in North America, where its central plot of asoulless corporation overtaking ...
-
Reviews
Once In A Lifetime
Dirs: PaulCrowder, John Dower. US. 2006. 98 mins. Aiming for the huge double demographicof football fans and 1970s nostalgics, Once In A Lifetime narrates the rise andfall of the New York Cosmos football team which, for a few short years in thelate 1970s, was home to stars of the ...
-
Reviews
White Palms (Feher Tenyer)
Dir: Szabolcs Hajdu. Hungary. 2006. 100mins.Szabolcs Hajdu's film casts a jaundicedeye over the world of sports prodigies. A grim and disenchanted portrait of howone young gymnast is almost ruined by a gruelling training programme and theinsatiable expectations of his parents, the film almost runs out of steam inthe second half, ...
-
Reviews
Taxidermy (Taxidermia)
Dir: Gyorgy Palfi.Hungary/Austria/France. 2005. 90 mins.Gyorgy Palfi's second feature, whichcollected a slew of awards including best film at the recent Hungarian FilmWeek, is likely to be as much of a talking point as his first film Hukkle,albeit for very different reasons. Spanning three generations of one family,this horror film will ...
-
Reviews
Snow Cake
Dir: Marc Evans. UK-Can. 2006. 112minsWith itstale of two misfits who improbably bond in a snowbound small town, Snow Caketakes a surefire formula and delivers a gently crowd-pleasing if somewhatlow-key - comedy-drama.A sweetlyintrospective execution, it marks a signal departure for British director MarcEvans, cranking the stylistics down several notches ...
-
Reviews
Relatives (Rokonok)
Dir: Istvan Szabo. Hungary. 2006. 110minsAfter 12 years making films with stronginternational flavour, Istvan Szabo is back home for an adaptation of acritically-acclaimed novel by Zsigmund Moricz about an ambitious but naiveidealist who is sucked in by corruption. A Hungarian picture made for Hungarianaudiences, this darkly ironic cautionary tale resonates ...
-
Reviews
Alpha Dog
Dir/scr: Nick Cassavetes. US. 2006. 122min.Alpha Dog aims to be a nihilistic exploration of a true story about alow-level LA drug dealer whose career was ended by a more-than-usuallysenseless murder. But director-screenwriter Nick Cassavetes spends too many ofhis 122 minutes amidst LA's over-privileged and over-stimulated teenagewasteland and too little providing ...
-
Reviews
The Darwin Awards
Dir/scr. Finn Taylor. US. 2006. 93 min.The Darwin Awards is a hit-and-miss comedy with far too few hits and way too manymisses. Indeed, the title is perilously close to reflexive, given the likelyfate of this misbegotten hybrid. A Premiere presentation at the Sundance FilmFestival, it will initially rely on the ...
-
Reviews
Steel City
Dir/scr. Brian Jun. US 2006. 95 min.An overlooked gem in Sundance's USdramatic competition, Steel City is awell-written and solidly-performed exploration of working-class male angst seenthrough the eyes of two very different sons as they struggle with the legacy oftheir dead-beat father.The achievement is all the more impressivegiven that debut filmmaker ...
-
Reviews
The Pink Panther
Dir: Shawn Levy. US. 2006. 95 minutes.Hollywood studio projection and analysisdepartments have rather crassly if understandably deemed remakes and franchisesthe surest thing going, even if one of the results is that there's often nocorrelative sense of joyful anticipation attached to these moviegoingexperiences. Owing to this and more, there's no particular ...