Latest reviews – Page 467
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Reviews
Hollywood Homicide
Dir: Ron Shelton. US. 2003. 115minsYou can't hit a home run every time you come up to bat, but director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, Tin Cup, White Men Can't Jump) strikes out completely with his latest film, a buddy-buddy action comedy set not in the world of sports but against ...
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Reviews
Niki&Flo
Dir: Lucian Pintilie. France-Romania. 2003. 98minsVeteran Romanian director Lucian Pintilie has crafted a fitfully amusing, occasionally absorbing fable of slow disintegration around a fragile story of a father who feels increasingly lonely and alienated as his children leave home, one for the afterlife and the other for the US. Mixing ...
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Reviews
Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Dir: Troy Miller. US. 2003. 82mins.A dead-on impression of Jim Carrey in one of his most popular early performances may not be a bad asset for a belated follow-up to a gross-out comedy classic. But without the real Carrey - or original writer-directors the Farrelly brothers - in attendance, New ...
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Reviews
S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
Dir: Rithy Panh. France. 2003. 101minsA sincere and honourable attempt to fathom the depths of human evil, documentary S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine offers eyewitness testimony to the painstaking system of torture and repression that existed in Cambodia during the 1970s. The film returns victims of the regime and ...
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Reviews
Drifters
Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai. Hong Kong. 2003. 120minsWang Xiaoshuai's follow-up to his Berlin winner Beijing Bicycle goes back to the more hermetic, introverted style that established his reputation with arthouse patrons in his earlier films. Drifters, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, is a Hong Kong production shot in ...
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Reviews
Joao Botelho's satirical stab at US 'imperialism'
Dir: Joao Botelho. Portugal, 2003. 90minsThis was not a very good year for Cannes openers. After the debacle of Fanfan La Tulipe in the Official Section, the Directors' Fortnight, evidently thinking a light intellectual entertainment with a political theme would be the best choice to launch the programme of the ...
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Reviews
Today And Tomorrow (Hoy Y Manana)
Dir: Alejandro Chomski. Argentina-Spain. 2003. 86minsOne of the most talked-up films at Cannes, the Un Certain Regard entry Today And Tomorrow turns out to be a watchable, non-judgmental, low-budget portrayal of a young woman's descent into prostitution in post-slump Argentina. Given the hype surrounding the director - who is the ...
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Reviews
Hurricanes (Entre Ciclones)
Dir. Enrique Colina. Cuba-Sp-Fre. 2003. 122minsA strangely populist choice for the normally rarefied atmosphere of Cannes' Critics' Week, Colina's debut, a comic take on life in contemporary Cuba, has already notched up over half a million admissions in its first five weeks of release at home, according to its director, ...
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Reviews
The Southern Cross (La Cruz Del Sur)
Dir: Pablo Reyero. Argentina/France. 2003. 86minsA long time in gestation - and picked for the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes at the last minute - Pablo Reyero's first fiction feature is sure to attract further festival fixtures, but will struggle to make it onto the commercial circuit beyond its ...
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Reviews
2 Fast 2 Furious
Dir: John Singleton. US. 2003. 108 mins.With R&B star Tyrese ably substituting for Vin Diesel and John Singleton taking over the directorial steering wheel, the big-budget sequel to surprise summer 2001 hit The Fast And The Furious is more conventional than its neo-B movie predecessor - but also more broadly ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story
Dir: Peter Greenaway. UK-Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2003. 126mins.Peter Greenaway's new trilogy The Tulse Luper Suitcases is merely the central element in a sprawling archipelago of a multi-media body of work. The project will take in film, TV, books, the internet and no less than 92 DVDs, each devoted to one of the ...
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Reviews
Where Is Madame Catherine' (Les Mains Buides)
Dir: Marc Recha. Spain-France. 2003. 126mins.Les Mains Buides (literally "empty hands" in Catalan but evocatively translated as Where Is Madame Catherine') does not represent a major departure from Marc Recha's previous effort, the mixed-reviewed 2001 Cannes competition contender Pau And His Brother. However, this Un Certain Regard entry should appease ...
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Reviews
Wrong Turn
Dir: Rob Schmidt. US-Ger. 2003. 83 mins.Even in the hands of a studio distributor, retro horror flick Wrong Turn, produced by creature effects maestro Stan Winston, had a lukewarm reception at the US box office, taking $5m from 1,615 sites for an average of $3,102. Now co-producers Summit Entertainment and ...
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Reviews
The Italian Job
Dir: F Gary Gray. US. 2003. 111 mins.A stylish, well-paced caper film always find a home, and The Italian Job fits the billing. Certainly in the US it has proved itself at the box office, opening to a strong $19.3m from 2,633 sites for a robust average of $7,330. Given ...
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Reviews
Gozu
Dir: Takashi Miike. Japan. 2003. 129minsAudiences never know quite what to expect from the indefatigably prolific Japanese oddball Takashi Miike: sometimes a couple of wildly inspired sequences will leaven a routine film, sometimes he relentlessly beats you into submission. With the barely-describable Gozu, however, Miike's crazed imagination delivers the goods ...
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Reviews
The Last Customer/Il Grido D'Angoscia Dell'uccello Predatore 20 Tagli D'Aprile
Dir: Nanni Moretti. Italy 2003. 23/27minsSometimes a short work from a major film-maker can give more pleasure than an epic feature from a lesser talent. That is certainly the case with Nanni Moretti's The Last Customer, a warm-hearted salute to a family pharmacy business that had become an institution in ...
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Reviews
The Fog Of War
Dir: Errol Morris. US. 2003. 95minsErrol Morris's latest documentary/essay, The Fog Of War, is a brilliant, nuanced examination of the career of Robert S McNamara, who served as secretary of defence in the US cabinet during the Vietnam War. Owing to its intellectual, moral and political complexity, the film, which ...
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Reviews
The Mother
Dir: Roger Michell. UK. 2003. 112minsA finely-shaded performance from veteran British actress Anne Reid is the shining centre of The Mother, a shrewd and believable portrait of an older woman's belated revolt against a life of quiet desperation. A thoughtful companion piece to the kind of themes previously explored in ...
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Reviews
Purple Butterfly
Dir: Lou Ye. China. 2003. 126minsAfter the Cannes Competition screening of Purple Butterfly, the long-awaited third film from Chinese director Lou Ye, some of the best critical minds of our generation - plus the present reviewer - stood outside the Salle Bunuel, arguing about the plot. Everyone had a slightly ...