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Latest reviews – Page 425
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Reviews
Wedding Crashers
Dir: David Dobkin. USA.2005. 119mins.Much is made of the recent ascension of a number of actors- including Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black and Owen Wilson- who, informally dubbed the "Frat Pack," have paired in various combinations ona number of studio comedy features. With the popularity of teen ...
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Reviews
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Dir: Tim Burton. US.2005. 115mins.Tim Burton brings histraditional baggage to the new film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie AndThe Chocolate Factory, a lavish summer tentpole from Warner Bros whichpurports to stay true to the original novel more than the sunny 1971 musical WillyWonka And The Chocolate Factory. Although that assertion ...
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Reviews
The Island
Dir: Michael Bay. US.2005. 135mins.Human cloning is thesci-fi theme of The Island, yet it is director Michael Bay's trademarkthundering action that leaves the lasting impression from this sleek,big-budget thriller co-produced by Warner Bros and DreamWorks. Thehalf-explored philosophical elements and a gratuitous dose of romance don't addmuch to the movie's overall ...
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Reviews
Fantastic Four
Dir: Tim Story. US. 2005.105 mins.The title characters inMarvel's longest running comic book series form a dysfunctional family ofsuperheroes who struggle to cope with the emergence of their superpowers andthe celebrity that results. So maybe it's appropriate that the lightweight butenjoyable movie version of Fantastic Four, with its playful, slightly ...
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Reviews
Dark Water
Dir: Walter Salles. US.2005. 100mins.Hideo Nakata's elegant2002 Japanese chiller Dark Water makes a smooth transition to a New YorkCity setting in its US remake thanks to an intelligent screenplay by RafaelYglesias and intense direction in his English-language debut by Walter Salles.But while a moreself-possessed film than the Hollywood redos of ...
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Reviews
Colour Blossoms
Dir/scr:Yonfan. HK-Chi. 2004. 106mins.A glorified soap opera wrapped up in silk, satin anddisrobed models, Yonfan's Color Blossoms will be hailed by his faithfuladmirers as a stylish melodrama about over-ripe divas, fresh ingenues and sexyhulks, whose fleeting basis in reality is a springboard for magnificent flightsof decadent fancy. Just imagine an ...
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Reviews
No Song Of Love
Dir/scr: Lars Kraume.Germany. 2005. 98mins.A hybrid of drama anddocumentary, Lars Kraume's sophomore screen effort deserves full points forbreaking down the barrier between the two genres, even if the story he uses forthis purpose is not always the most original or imaginative one.Kraume uses two brothers asthe basis for No Song ...
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Reviews
Ashura (Ashura-jo no Hitomi)
Dir: Yojiro Takita. Jap.2005. 119mins.The film version of a hitplay, Ashura is set in and around the Kabuki world of early 19th-centuryTokyo (then called Edo). It even stars Somegoro Ichikawa, a Kabuki actorreprising his stage role as the demon-slaying hero.Save for its Kabukiperformance scenes, however, the film is, less Kabuki ...
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Reviews
Samurai Commando Mission 1549 (Sengoku Jieitai 1549)
Dir: Masaaki Tezuka.Japan. 2005. 119mins.A remake of Kosei Saito's1979 film about a military Self Defence Forces (SDF) unit that time travelsback to the days of the samurai, Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 hasalready attracted a flood of foreign rights offers for producer KadokawaPictures. Concluded deals totalled 31 at last count - ...
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Reviews
The Descent
Dir/scr: Neil Marshall.UK. 2005. 96mins.The Descent, Neil Marshall's follow-up to 2002 hit DogSoldiers, is superior British genre fare: unashamedly gory but handsomelycrafted and inventive too, and with some gallows humour to leaven the moreextreme moments. Marshall's influences are wide-ranging. He has pitched thefilm as 'Deliverance goes underground', but he seems ...
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Reviews
Seven Invisible Men
Dir:Sharunas Bartas. Lith-Fr-Port. 2005. 119mins.Add to the seven invisible men of this film's title aninvisible plot and invisible characterisation. Sharunas Bartas, the darling ofcinema purists in the 1990s, here self-destructs, offering us a brilliantparody of an art film. Alas, this appears to have been unintentional. Thiscompletely impenetrable exercise will find ...
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Reviews
Beauty Remains (Mei Ren Yi Jiu)
Dir: Ann Hu. China-US.2005. 89mins.Set against the backdropof the late 1940s Chinese Revolution, Beauty Remains is a grand,romantic saga where passion trumps politics and the lives of three littlepeople amount to more than a hill of beans. A handsomely mounted production, itelegantly balances the operatic and the cerebral in a ...
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Reviews
Avenge But One Of My Eyes (Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay)
Dir/scr: AviMograbi. Is. 2005. 75mins.Avi Mograbi's well-deserved reputation for systematicallybaiting the official policies of the Israeli government will spread evenfurther with Avenge But One Of My Eyes, his explosively provocativedocumentary essay that played out of competition at Cannes.As usual, itwill be highly appreciated by all those who share Mograbi's radical ...
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Reviews
Zim And Co
Dir: Pierre Jolivet. Fr. 2005. 90mins.Played for- aughs like the flipside of Mathieu Kassovitz's gritty LaHaine, Zim And Co is a pleasant ultra benign diversion in itsportrayal of the trials and tribulations of a multi-cultural cast of characters- one Arab, one African and one white (who may be Jewish).Screened at ...
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Reviews
Sleeper (Schlafer)
Dir/scr: BenjaminHeisenberg. Austr-Ger. 2005.100mins.The latest co-productioninvolving dynamic Austrian/German directors' collective Coop99 (Darwin'sNightmare, The Edukators), Sleeper is an austere,thought-provoking post-9/11 drama about a German scientist who allows himselfto be talked into spying on a North African colleague.Perhaps a little too dourand drabbly-shot to reach much of an international audience outside offestivals, ...
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Reviews
The King
Dir: James Marsh. US.2005. 105mins.Last year Gael GarciaBernal was the face of Cannes, with his contrasting performances in BadEducation and The Motorcycle Diaries. This year, he extends hisrange even further, smouldering with bad boy sex appeal as a prodigal son in TheKing, an English-language Gothic drama set in the American ...
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Reviews
War Of The Worlds
Dir:Steven Spielberg. US. 2005. 116 mins. It'salmost as if there are two Steven Spielbergs behind the camera on thiscontemporary version of H G Wells' classic sci-fi story about an alien invasionof Earth: one delivers a thrilling action adventure with just the right mix ofhumanity and effects; the other produces a ...
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Reviews
Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul
Dir/scr: Fatih Akin. Ger.2005. 90mins.Following on the heels ofhis Golden Bear win for Head-On at last year's Berlin Film Festival,Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin shows a different side of his artisticpersonality in Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul, a lovingmusical homage to that glorious city straddling Asia and Europe.Though it ...
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Reviews
The President's Last Bang (Geuddae Geu Saramdeul)
Dir. ImSangsoo. S Kor. 2005. 102mins.The mostambitious feature yet from director Im Sangsoo (A Good Lawyer's Wife),his fictionalised telling of the assassination of South Korean President ParkChung-hee was released only after the late statesman's daughter had documentaryfootage removed on the grounds that the film was not accurate.But then ThePresident's Last ...
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Reviews
Northeast (Nordeste)
Dir/scr: Juan Solanas.Fr-Sp-Bel-Arg. 2005. 104mins.A woman's selfish questto adopt a baby becomes an eye-opening journey into the heart of Argentina in Northeast,a first feature from director Juan Solanas that contrasts the beauty of thecountry with the ugliness of what happens there.The personal story is thekey to a political statement as ...