Latest reviews – Page 485
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Reviews
Scooby-Doo
Dir: Raja Gosnell. US. 2002. 86 mins.Corporate film-making has become so transparent these days that Hollywood studios are not even making a pretence of masking their priorities on a project like Scooby-Doo. Moving at a pace so frenetic it makes MTV look stately, and blanketed in radio-friendly pop tunes (rock ...
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Reviews
The Hard Word
Dir: Scott Roberts. Australia. 2002. 103 mins.Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, two Australian actors running hot in the States, return home to lend class to this lively but otherwise undistinguished gangster comedy-thriller. Screenwriter Scott Roberts' directorial debut has plenty of bloodthirsty violence shared between a strong cast of tough guys ...
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Reviews
Japon
Dir: Carlos Reygadas. Mexico-Spain. 2002. 122 mins. Carlos Reygadas's visionary and impressive feature debut announces the director as an exciting new talent. It is also highly uncompromising: Reygadas states that he's interested in film as a way of creating sensations rather than of making a statement or telling a story, ...
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Reviews
Winter (L'Inverno)
Dir: Nina di Majo. Italy. 2002. 100 mins.A great performance by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is not enough to save this self-indulgent ensemble piece by young Neapolitan director Nina di Majo. It's a sad truth that most films are lost or saved in the first few minutes, and the opening of ...
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Reviews
Windtalkers
Dir: John Woo. US. 2002. 134mins. Finally the war may be over. The surge of expensive World War II movies which was kicked off by Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line four years ago now looks like it's coming to an end with John Woo's often admirable but ...
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Reviews
Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Dir: Callie Khouri. US. 2002. 116 mins. With millions of loyal readers waiting eagerly to see their fictional heroines made real on screen, Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, based on Rebecca Wells' 1996 international best-seller, is primed to become the must-see chick flick of the 2002 summer. Fans will ...
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Reviews
The Sum Of All Fears
Dir: Phil Alden Robinson. US. 2002. 124 mins. It's not the efficiently staged action that stands out in the fourth movie adapted from Tom Clancy's series of best-selling Jack Ryan political thriller novels. Nor even the debut of Ben Affleck as a younger, sexier incarnation of CIA stalwart Ryan. Rather, ...
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Reviews
Searching For Debra Winger (Hladanie)
Dir: Rosanna Arquette. US. 2001. 97mins. Special ScreeningBilled as a "Rosanna Arquette Experience", this documentary portrait of the pressures faced by actresses in the film business is modestly described by its first-time director as "like a home movie. Very simple'. She's right: with its from-the-hip camerawork, some shot by Arquette ...
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Reviews
Ten Minutes Older - The Trumpet
Dirs: Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Chen Kaige, Aki Kaurismaki, Spike Lee, Victor Erice, Wim Wenders. 2002. 92 mins. There are enormous advantages to the short-film format. It allows directors a creative freedom rarely enjoyed these days by even the most bankable names. For the audience, it offers a chance to ...
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Reviews
Bad Company
Dir: Joel Schumacher. US. 2002. 111 mins. Given producer Jerry Bruckheimer's track record with odd-couple action movies (Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Enemy Of The State), and the promising pairing of Anthony Hopkins with Chris Rock, action comedy Bad Company could hardly be a better proposition or a bigger disappointment. ...
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Reviews
Once Upon A Time In The Midlands
Dir: Shane Meadows. UK. 2002. 104 mins. Director's FortnightExtensive critical acclaim has failed to generate great audience enthusiasm for the previous films of British hyphenate Shane Meadows. A broad, bittersweet comedy, his third feature Once Upon A Time In The Midlands should tip the balance in the opposite direction. A ...
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Reviews
Sex Is Comedy
Dir: Catherine Breillat. France. 2002. 92 mins. A welcome reprieve from the joyless intensity of such recent succes de scandale as Romance and A Ma Soeur, Sex Is Comedy allows Catherine Breillat to reveal the kind of light touch and easy humour that some critics may have thought was beyond ...
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Reviews
Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron
Dirs: Kelly Asbury, Lorna Cook. US. 2002. 84mins. There's no denying the passion and expertise that went into Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron, the third traditionally animated movie from DreamWorks SKG. But this perfunctory and serious story about a wild stallion in the untamed American frontier struggling to maintain his ...
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Reviews
Irreversible
Dir: Gaspar Noe. France. 2002. 95mins. Flagged from the beginning of the festival as Cannes' 'succes de scandal', with a huge commotion in the French media and an official warning printed on its tickets, Irreversible emerges as neither successful nor, come to that, especially scandalous. A significant backward step for ...
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Reviews
Divine Intervention (Yadon Ilaheyya)
Dir: Elia Suleiman. France-Palestine. 2002. 92mins. Subtitled a "chronicle of love and pain", Elia Suleiman's second feature belies its own maudlin-sounding description and reinvents the tragic tensions in Palestine as a deadpan, slow-burning, almost silent comedy. Lacing the surreal apocalyptic humour of Roy Andersson's Songs From The Second Floor with ...
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Reviews
The Son (Le Fils)
Dirs: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Belgium/ France. 2002. 103 mins.The Dardennes' austere and uncompromising aesthetic is back on full display in The Son, a minutely observed, dramatically compelling study of the violent emotions seething below the drab surface of working-class lives. Not exactly an easy sell, in other words, which ...
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Reviews
The Pianist
Director: Roman Polanski. 2002. 148 mins. In Competition Working from material close to his own childhood experiences in war ravaged Poland, Roman Polanski has created his most satisfying film in twenty years. Old-fashioned, stately and a little uneven, The Pianist recovers from a disappointing start to mature into a restrained ...
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Reviews
Enough
Dir: Michael Apted. US. 2002. 115 mins. One of a handful of non-traditional chick-flicks hitting US screens this summer, Enough starts out as a promisingly taut woman-in-peril thriller but eventually degenerates into a questionable cross between a female Rocky and a Mission: Impossible-style action romp. Still, younger female moviegoers will ...