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Latest reviews – Page 428
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Reviews
Madagascar
Dirs: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath. US. 2005. 86 mins. Apparently inspired by both the slapstick cartoons of Tex Avery and thestrange, stylised paintings of Henri Rousseau, the latest computer animatedfamily feature from DreamWorks delivers eye-catching fun for kids and justabout enough cute comic moments to keep their parents amused as ...
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Reviews
Free Zone
Dir. Amos Gitai.Fr-Is-Jor-Bel. 2005. 94mins.Even his detractors would have to agree that Free Zone,the Cannes competition entry from Amos Gitai, is his most satisfactory picturesince Kippur. The first Israel-Jordan co-production on record, his roadmovie, which features three women each representing a facet of the Middle Eastconflict, is less ideologically insistent ...
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Reviews
Don't Come Knocking
Dir: Wim Wenders. US.2005. 122mins.Reunited for the first timein 20 years, Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard fail to rekindle the magic of theircollaboration on Palme D'Or winner Paris, Texas. Don't Come Knockingis a film of striking compositions and telling moments that never achieves thetender depths of emotion that distinguished its ...
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Reviews
The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada
Dir: Tommy Lee Jones. US.2005. 120mins.A lone quest for justice becomes an ode to friendship andthe common ground between different cultures in The Three Burials OfMelquiades Estrada, a thoroughly respectable feature-length directorialdebut from Oscar-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones.An actor who believes thatless is more, Jones brings the same approach to ...
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Reviews
Three Times
Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Taiwan.2005. 120minsTaiwanese director HouHsiao-Hsien is in the mood for love with Three Times, a tryptich ofromantic stories in which the same actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) playdifferent characters in 1966, 1911 and the present day. An ambitious notionresults in a slight, wisp of a film that ...
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Reviews
Shanghai Dreams
Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai,China, 2005. 120mins.Once a rebel now workingin the mainstream, Wang Xiaoshuai draws on his own reminiscences as anadolescent for Cannes competition entry Shanghai Dreams.Wang's family was relocatedfrom Shanghai to the poor, mountainous province of Guiyang, all part of theChinese authorities' decision to install fortified industrial cities near theborder ...
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Reviews
To Paint Or Make Love (Peindre Ou Faire L'amour)
Dir/scr: Arnaud andJean-Marie Larrieu. Fr. 2005. 98mins.The second film byFrance's talented, and as yet little-known, team the Larrieu brothers promisedto be a wild card in the Cannes competition. Given their inventive, hugelyoddball debut feature A Real Man (2003), their follow-up could well haveturned out as much a mood-lightening charmer as ...
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Reviews
The Child (L'Enfant)
Dir/scr: Jean-Pierre andLuc Dardenne. Bel-Fr. 2005. 95mins A few square miles of unprepossessing urban landscapecontinue to yield a rich fictional universe in the Dardenne brothers' latestchronicle of life among modern European have-nots.Filmed as usual in theBelgian industrial town of Seraing, The Child continues the run ofsteely, confident realist dramas that ...
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Reviews
Broken Flowers
Dir/scr: Jim Jarmusch.US. 2005. 106minsAfter diversions into genre-subversion like mysticalwestern Dead Man and modern day samurai saga Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch makes afull scale return to the kind of lugubrious, meticulously observed comedy thatfirst made his reputation in the 1980s.Commercial prospects arevery robust for Broken Flowers, a film that fans ...
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Reviews
Le Temps Qui Reste
Dir. Francois Ozon. Fr.2005. 79mins.Faithful to his reputation of changing genres with everynew film, Francois Ozon reveals yet another facet of his talents with LeTemps Qui Reste, treading on a familiar path which he tries to decorate inhis own personal style.The concept - a personfacing imminent death and having to ...
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Reviews
Battle In Heaven (Batalla En El Cielo)
Dir:Carlos Reygadas. Mex. 2005. 98mins.Followingon the heels of his demanding but brilliant first feature, Japon,Mexican director Carlos Reygadas now bulls his way into the Cannes competitionline-up to give us another exceptionally ambitious aesthetic effort. While itdoesn't always work - and critical opinion is sure to be violently split - it'simmensely ...
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Reviews
Where The Truth Lies
Dir:Atom Egoyan. Canada. 2005. 107mins.Fans of Canadian auteurAtom Egoyan, hoping for a comeback from the multiple missteps of his last film,Ararat, which played at Cannes in 2002, are bound to be disappointed bythe director's latest offering, Where The Truth Lies. Based on RupertHolmes' novel of the same title, the film, ...
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Reviews
Manderlay
Dir/scr: Lars Von Trier. Den-Swe-Fr-UK-Ger-Neth.2005. 139mins.The road to hell is pavedwith the noblest of intentions in Manderlay, the stunning second film inLars Von Trier's American trilogy. A philosophical debate on slavery, equality,oppression, free will and racism, it will inevitably be read as anti-Americanin general and a specific response to the ...
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Reviews
A History Of Violence
Dir: David Cronenberg.US. 2005. 96minsTwo American genres - thefilm noir and the Western - are gene-spliced into vigorous new shape in whatlooks, at first sight, like David Cronenberg's most mainstream project inyears. Yet A History Of Violence, a deviously-plotted tale of danger andthe darkness beneath innocent surfaces, soon reveals characteristic ...
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Reviews
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Dir Shane Black, US. 2005. 103 mins.A hugely entertaining mix of film noir, comic buddy movie andmetacinematic romp, Kiss KissBang Bang marks the directing debut of one-time wunderkind scripter Shane Black (LethalWeapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight), who has been off the radar for the best partof a decade. From ...
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Reviews
The Power Of Nightmares
Dir Adam Curtis, UK, 2005, 157 mins.Unlike most political documentaries made in the US, this highlyentertaining and informative BBC production refreshingly offers itself as astraightforward, almost academic essay, with thesis statement, development and demonstration,and concluding restatement of thesis. Its basic argument is that theAmerican neo-conservative political movement (exemplified by the ...
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Reviews
Quando Sei Nato Non Puoi Piu Nasconderti (Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide)
Dir Marco Tullio Giordana.Italy/UK/Fr. 2005. 118 mins The latest film by The Best of Youth director Marco Tullio Giordana is, like Gianni Amelio's Lamerica, a portrait of an Italy that is trying to get to grips with its newstatus as a multicultural society, whose immigrant population has increasedthirty-fold since 1970. ...
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Reviews
Election (Hak Seh Wui)
Director Johnnie To Hong Kong. 2005. 100 mins.Election sets out to do for the Hong Kong Triads what TheGodfather did for the New York Italian mafia: enter into the mindset of aclose-knit criminal and social brotherhood, and set its members' respect for ritualand tradition against the bloody brutality of their ...
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Reviews
Bashing
Dir/scr: MasahiroKobayashi. Jap. 2005. 82mins.A mystifying experience for any but a Japanese audience, Bashing,Masahiro Kobayashi's fictional rendering of a real-life event, would haveplayed more comfortably on less demanding grounds than its Cannes competitionberth.The story of a Japanesehumanitarian worker kidnapped in Iraq who then returned home to widespreadspite, Bashing is expressed ...