![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 421
-
Reviews
Thank You For Smoking
Dir. Jason Reitman. US.2005. 92mins.First-time director JasonReitman pulls off the miraculous feat of creating a single-issue comedy thatretains its freshness and drive throughout with his satire Thank You ForSmoking.It's a bristling, wickedlysmart portrait of a lobbyist named Nick Naylor (Eckhart), who makes his living orrather, in the running motif that ...
-
Reviews
L'Enfer
Dir: DanisTanovic. Fr-It-Bel-Jap. 2005. 98mins.Forget everythingyou thought you knew about Danis Tanovic, whose debut feature No Man's Land(2001) won the best foreign language Oscar. L'Enfer, his sophomoreeffort, leaves behind his native Balkan territory and its stalemate politics totackle a far more subtle, complex and less evident theme.The script he useswas ...
-
Reviews
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
Dir: Park Chan-wook. SKor. 2005. 113mins.Few contemporarydirectors are able to mix genres and moods as confidently as Park Chan-wook -and get away with it. The third and final part of the Korean director'sJacobean revenge trilogy, after Sympathy For Mr Vengeance and Oldboy,is the most daring of the lot in the ...
-
Reviews
Edmond
Dir: Stuart Gordon. US.2005. 81mins.You never know how aDavid Mamet adaptation is going to turn out. The best of the last 10 years, Oleanna,was the one that stayed closest to its stage original in the college settingand the claustrophobic one-to-one stand-off of the two main characters.William H Macy starred thereand ...
-
Reviews
Pride & Prejudice
Dir Joe Wright. 2005UK-US-Fr. 127mins.There'sno question that 19th-century English novelist Jane Austen still has shapelylegs. Ang Lee's Sense & Sensibility (1995) enjoyed seven Oscarnominations (including best picture) and $134m box-office worldwide, $43m fromthe US alone, while Colin Firth owes his career to a 1995 BBC version of Pride & Prejudice ...
-
Reviews
Mary
Dir: Abel Ferrara.It-Fr-US. 2005. 83mins.Watching Abel Ferrara's Maryis like watching an odd religious ritual taking place in a language we onlyhalf understand. We recognise the power of the ceremony, and the commitment ofthose involved - but as for what the hell is going on, and what it all means,and whether ...
-
Reviews
Everlasting Regret (Changhen ge)
Dir: Stanley Kwan.Chi-HK. 2005. 115mins.With EverlastingRegret, Stanley Kwan delivers a women's film par excellence; the kind thatfilm-makers such as Douglas Sirk loved to spin out and that Kwan himself hassuccessfully proved adept at in the past.A sprawling, melancholystory about unrequited love adapted from one of modern China's most successfulnovels, it ...
-
Reviews
Imagine Me And You
Dir/scr: Ol Parker.UK-Ger. 2005. 93minsOl Parker ventures intoRichard Curtis territory for his directorial debut Imagine You And Me, apleasant romantic comedy that often appears torn between its more soulful, reflectiveinstincts and the lure of following the crowd-pleasing Curtis formula. Theformula generally wins even if the mismatched lovers on this occasion ...
-
Reviews
Revolver
Dir/scr: Guy Ritchie. Fr-UK. 2005. 110mins.After the fiasco of Swept Away there wasnowhere to go but up for writer/director Guy Ritchie. Retreating to the safeterritory of gangland squabbles, dirty deeds, diamond geezers and hardcoreviolence must have seemed like a good idea but Revolver is such aconvoluted, risibly overwrought muddle of ...
-
Reviews
Oliver Twist
Dir: Roman Polanski.Fr-UK-Czech Rep. 2005. 128mins.Roman Polanski made thisnew version of Oliver Twist for his children, but it's hard to imaginekids anywhere warming to his austere, colourless treatment of the story.Oliver Twist here evokes both Polanski's traumatic childhood andthe Wladyslaw Szpilman character in The Pianist - a blameless humandesperate to ...
-
Reviews
Tideland
Dir: Terry Gilliam. UK-Can.2005. 121mins.Terry Gilliam has spent hisentire career celebrating the power of the imagination to transcend the awfulrealities of life and death. He has described Mitch Cullin's Tideland as"Alice In Wonderland meets Psycho" and it sounds like idealmaterial for him.Unfortunately, thismacabre, longwinded fantasy is closer in tone to ...
-
Reviews
Breakfast On Pluto
Dir: Neil Jordan. Ire-UK. 2005. 135mins.Neil Jordan comes over all Almodovar in BreakfastOn Pluto, a sprawling, picaresque account of a young transvestite's epicodyssey in search of his mother. Jordan has a patchy record with broad comicmaterial (High Spirits, We're No Angels etc) and this reunionwith Butcher Boy writer Patrick McCabe ...
-
Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
-
Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
-
Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
-
Reviews
Goal!
Dir: Danny Cannon. UK.2005 110minsGoal! is the first episode in a planned football trilogyabout a 19-year-old Latino Santiago plucked from LA to play in the EnglishPremiership. The second film - to be shot by House Of Wax director JaumeCollet Serra from next month - will see him play on a ...
-
Reviews
Elizabethtown
Dir/scr:Cameron Crowe. US. 2005. 138mins.Aromantic comedy for the MTV generation with some of that old Kentucky magicthrown in for the oldies, Elizabethtown illustrates the dangers of goingstraight for the feelgood jugular. Feelgood has to be earned. So do the last 48minutes of a 138-minute film. And the overlong Elizabethtown has ...
-
Reviews
Elizabethtown
Dir/scr:Cameron Crowe. US. 2005. 138mins.Aromantic comedy for the MTV generation with some of that old Kentucky magicthrown in for the oldies, Elizabethtown illustrates the dangers of goingstraight for the feelgood jugular. Feelgood has to be earned. So do the last 48minutes of a 138-minute film. And the overlong Elizabethtown has ...
-
Reviews
Bubble
Dir: Steven Soderbergh.US. 2005. 73mins.Soderbergh goes back tobasics. Not in the tricksy, star-stuffed mode of Full Frontal or Schizopolis:in Bubble the basics are the ones that really matter. A strong storylineand good dramatic structure give this quirky tragic love triangle a grip on theaudience; and a certain edgy eccentricity in ...
-
Reviews
Corpse Bride
Dirs:Mike Johnson, Tim Burton. UK. 2005. 75mins.Thefirst stop-motion feature directed (in part) by Tim Burton - he produced andwrote The Nightmare Before Christmas - Corpse Bride brings theHollywood fantasist's dark and fertile imagination to bear on a hugelyentertaining macabre love story.Likethe two Shrek movies, the film has a fairytale backbone ...