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Latest reviews – Page 412
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Reviews
Glastonbury
Dir. Julien Temple. UK. 2005. 135 min.A tribute to the legendary UK pop musicfestival, Glastonbury achieves a state ofgrace rare in performance documentaries; you begin to feel you're in attendanceat this three-day marathon of music, mood-altering substances and mayhem. At135 minutes, it's a concert film that will test the endurance ...
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Reviews
Crime Novel (Romanzo Criminale)
Dir: Michele Placido.It-UK-Fr. 2005. 146mins.The middle floor betweenItaly's auteur attic and its commercial bargain basement is curiously empty.Screenwriting duo Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia are among the few to havemade their home here, scripting films like The Best Of Youth, which for all its symphonic, multi-linearstructure and often prickly political ...
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Reviews
Curious George
Dir: Matthew OCallaghan. US. 2005. 77mins.Curious George, the mischievous monkey known togenerations of kids from the classic picture books by Margretand H A Rey, finally makes it to the big screen inthis slight but sweet animated tale from Imagine and Universal.Aimed firmly at youngerchildren (probably in the three- to eight-year-old ...
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Reviews
Firewall (Firewall)
Dir: Richard Loncraine. US. 2005. 100mins.Though it boasts a rare star turn by Harrison Fordand a strong supporting cast, Firewallis a kidnap thriller that's driven more by its high tech gadgets than by itsunder-pressure characters. Ford's presence, the story's family theme and theappeal to digital age paranoia could help the ...
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Reviews
Lunacy (Sileni)
Dir/scr: Jan Svankmajer. Czech Rep/Slovakia.2005. 118mins.The latest nightmare from veteran Czech surrealistJan Svankmajer is, as the director puts it, "aninfantile tribute to Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade."But audiences will also see affinities with various cinematic specialists indream logic, notably Luis Buñuel and Walerian Borowczyk.An exploration of madness,sanity ...
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Reviews
One Last Dance
Dir: Max Makowski.Singapore. 2006. 100mins.Here's a puzzle: Brazil-born film-maker Makowski (The PigeonEgg Strategy, Taboo) makes hisfirst film in Cantonese - a Singapore-set crime thriller which is soaked in thevisual stylistics and artificial dialogue one has come to expect from homages to Hong Kong action films.But One Last Dance delivers an ...
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Reviews
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Dir/scr GoranDukic. US. 2006.91mins.Croatian director Goran Dukic's endearingly oddball Wristcutters: A Love Story is a strange, somewhat unaccountable mess sharpenedby a brainy conceit and some wonderfully underplayed acting.It's an overstuffed roadmovie brimming with ideas and feeling about a lost world of disaffected souls. Steepedin a mordant black humour about suicide ...
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Reviews
Salvage
Dirs/scr: Joshua and Jeffrey Crook. US. 2006. 79mins.The brothers Crook, Joshua and Jeffrey,previously made an urban thriller, SuckerPunch, and the title is dismayingly consistent with their new feature Salvage. In producing a structuralhorror movie, freely mixing the irrational and the incoherent, the brothers offer conflicted scenarios in relating the story ...
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Reviews
No 2
Dir: Toa Fraser. New Zealand. 2006. 93mins.A Fijian matriarch calls her family together for onebig party before she dies in Toa Fraser's agreeable directorial debut which hadits international premiere at the Sundance Film Festival recently before headinginto Berlin's Panorma section.No. 2,named after the house on the street where the film ...
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Reviews
Something New
Dir: Sanaa Hamri. US. 2006. 100mins.Enjoyable, without being especially deepor involving, the romantic comedy SomethingNew should appeal to fans of Waiting To Exhale and HowStella Got Her Groove Back. Like them, this latest picture features astrong, black female protagonist who finds it difficult to find a suitablepartner and, as such, ...
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Reviews
Little Red Flowers (Kan shang qu hen mei)
Dir. Zhang Yuan. China.2006. 92mins.In the droll Little Red Flowers, eccentric Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuanshapes a comically alive, delicately observed adaptation of theautobiographical novel by Wang Shuo.It plays like a Chinese Zero For Conduct:a sharply etched, emotionally precise account of an incorrigiblefour-year-child's year spent at a kindergarten boarding school.If ...
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Reviews
Solo Dios Sabe
Dir/scr: Carlos Bolado. Mex-Braz. 2006. 114mins.Former editor Carlos Bolado- best known for his work on Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate - makes an overlyambitious piece with Solo Dios Sabe which, premiered inthe world dramatic competition at Sundance.Despite a promising start, itultimately proves too overextended for its own good, despite ...
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Reviews
Klimt
Dir: Raúl Ruiz. Aust-Ger-UK-Fr.2006. 129mins (Director's Cut)/97 mins (short version).There are biopics- and then there are biopics in the style of Raúl Ruiz. Anyone hoping for an easily comprehensible,fact-based ride through the life of Viennese painter Gustav Klimt(1862-1918) will be baffled by the flamboyantly discontinuous approach taken bythe prolific Chilean-born ...
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Reviews
Quinceanera
Dir/scr: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland. US.2006. 90mins.Winner of both the jury and audience prizes indramatic competition at Sundance this weekend, Quinceanera is a warm-heartedportrait of a trio of outcasts in the conservative Latino community of EchoPark, East Los Angeles, who pull together as a family of sorts. Glatzer and ...
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Reviews
Destricted
Dirs: Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla,Larry Clark, Gaspar Noe,Richard Prince, Sam Taylor-Wood. US/UK. 2006. 116mins.A series of short adult films by someof the most outre artists and film-makers on theworld stage today, Destrictedis an unusual project which brings pornographic imagery somewhere into the veryouter margins of the mainstream.Continuingthe trend ...
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Reviews
Open Window
Dir/scr: Mia Goldman. US. 2006. 98mins.Debut film-maker Mia Goldman uses the intelligent andtroubling Open Window to explore the ramifications- physical, psychological and emotional - of a sexual assault upon a young woman.In the process, she denies the audience the visceral satisfaction of vengeance,opting instead for helplessness, defeat and inadequacy. It ...
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Reviews
God Grew Tired Of Us
Dir. Christopher Quinn. US. 2006. 86minsAn emotionally absorbing documentary from ChristopherQuinn, God Grew Tired Of Us is apiece that demands another telling of the genocidalSudanese civil war and the horrifying emotional and physical conditions itinflicted on its thousands of battered survivors.It also stands as an ablecompanion piece to Megan Mylan ...
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Reviews
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Dir. Kirby Dick. US. 2005. 100minsAlight-hearted but ultimately serious exploration of the cultural chill imposedby the Motion Picture Association Of America's ratingsystem, Kirby Dick's new documentary exposes the process for the sham it is.Financed by US cable network IFC TV anddirect-to-home video distributor NetFlix, This Film Is Not Yet Rated ...
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Reviews
Art School Confidential
Dir. Terry Zwigoff. US.2006. 102mins.TerryZwigoff's ArtSchool Confidential doesn't achieve the promise of its intriguing premise -how far will an aspiring artist go to achieve recognition' ScreenwriterDaniel Clowes' answer' Far.But his script doesn't work hard enough to merit this cynical if trueconclusion.Audiences will be left wondering what tothink about a movie ...
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Reviews
Annapolis
Dir. Justin Lin. US. 2006. 103mins.Justin Lin's studio debut, Annapolis is a peculiarly engineered piece of Reagan-style swaggercouched in the form of popular entertainment. It ends with the sound ofmilitary drumbeat - and audiences are likely to feel bludgeoned by what hasgone before.It is capably ifdistractedly made, though it has ...