Latest reviews – Page 489
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Reviews
About A Boy
Dirs: Paul and Chris Weitz. UK/US. 2002. 100minsWill Britain's latest semi-confessional romantic comedy be the new Bridget Jones's Diary' It certainly has the right ingredients: a powerful combination of best-selling novelist Nick Hornby, Hugh Grant and the confident, commercial touch which co-producers Working Title have brought to this genre in ...
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Reviews
Showtime
Dir Tom Dey. US 2002. 95mins.In the silly, utterly redundant, and only sporadically funny action comedy Showtime, Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy try to have their cake and eat it, cashing in on their established screen images while at the same time spoofing and deviating from them. Cliche-ridden and ...
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Reviews
Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella)
Dir: Pedro Almodovar. Spain. 2002. 116mins.Hable Con Ella (Talk To Her) shows director Pedro Almodovar getting back to his roots after the heady international success of his last, Oscar-winning effort All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre). In the wake of Mother, Almodovar could probably have made any film ...
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Reviews
24 Hour Party People
Dir: Michael Winterbottom. UK. 2001. 110mins.Anarchic, exasperating and ambitious, Michael Winterbottom's boisterous celebration of 16 rollercoaster years in Manchester's club scene is a real oddball item whose eventual cult status could - like that of the music it portrays - outstrip its commercial performance by miles. A young urban crowd ...
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Reviews
24 Hour Party People
Dir: Michael Winterbottom. UK. 2001. 110mins.Anarchic, exasperating and ambitious, Michael Winterbottom's boisterous celebration of 16 rollercoaster years in Manchester's club scene is a real oddball item whose eventual cult status could - like that of the music it portrays - outstrip its commercial performance by miles. A young urban crowd ...
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Reviews
Kissing Jessica Stein
Dir: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. US 2001. 96minsHalfway into the gender-bending romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein, the 28-year-old, eponymous heroine describes herself as "a Jewish Sandra Dee". A more apt comparison might be Annie Hall, whose physical mannerisms and stammering speech patterns actress/writer Jennifer Westfeldt seems to have appropriated for her character. ...
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Reviews
Resident Evil
Dir: Paul W S Anderson. UK-Ger. 2002. 100mins.Resident Evil is strictly for the game boys. Of course, given that the computer games on which the film is based have sold more than 16m units worldwide, the game boys - lured by the promise of gory zombie effects and Milla Jovovich ...
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Reviews
Harrison's Flowers
Dir Elie Chouraqui. US/France 2000. 123mins.A stronger, more charismatic actress would have given Harrison's Flowers, the war melodrama directed by Frenchman Eli Chouraqui, a sharper dramatic focus than it gets in the hands of Andie MacDowell, an appealing actress who's more adept in light romantic comedies (Four Weddings And A ...
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Reviews
The Time Machine
Dir: Simon Wells. US. 2002. 97mins.Almost from start to finish, The Time Machine, the new remake of HG Wells's classic sci-fi novel, is a poorly conceived and executed film, failing to take full advantage of the major technical changes that have improved the sci-fi-fantasy genre during the past two ...
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Reviews
Ice Age
Dirs: Chris Wedge, Carlos Sladanha. US. 2002. 81 mins. It may not have the stuff to top - either commercially or creatively - Shrek and Monsters, Inc, but with its impressive computer animation, appealing characters and well-crafted blend of comedy, action and drama Ice Age certainly has the necessary ingredients ...
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Reviews
All About The Benjamins
Dir: Kevin Bray. US. 2002. 96 mins. With three mid-level hits for New Line - Friday, Next Friday and The Players Club - already under his belt, rapper -turned-multihyphenate film-maker Ice Cube continues in a cheerfully generic vein with the studio's All About The Benjamins, only this time with the ...
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Reviews
Amnesia
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores. Italy/Spain. 2002. 114mins.Amnesia is the second 'little' film to be fired off by Gabriele Salvatores while he tries to raise the funds to make an adaptation of Amitav Ghosh's novel The Calcutta Chromosome. Teeth (Denti, 2000) was a curious tale of precarious dental and mental health which ...
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Reviews
Skins
Dir: Chris Eyre. US. 2002. 86minViewers looking to Native American director Chris Eyre for a buoyant follow-up to his 1996 indie smash Smoking Signals will come away disappointed with Skins, a film that like his feature debut, examines life at a dilapidated Indian reservation from the inside, but lacks the ...
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Reviews
Pumpkin
Dirs: Adam Larson Broder, Tony R Abrams. US. 2002. 122min.Too rambling and diffuse for its own good, Pumpkin, Adam Larson Broder and Tony R Abrams feature directorial debut, is a youth comedy that suffers from an uncertain tone and conflicting intentions. Christina Ricci, one of the most audacious actresses of ...
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Reviews
40 Days And 40 Nights
Dir: Michael Lehmann. US. 2002. 95mins.Stripping the military uniform that he valiantly wore in his last two screen roles (Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down) for sexier civilian clothes in his new romantic comedy proves to be a good idea for broadening the appeal of fast-rising star Josh Hartnett among ...
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Reviews
On The Road To Emmaus
Dir: Markku Polonen. Finland. 2001. 77mins.Markku Polonen has been on Finland's film-making scene for nearly two decades, but On The Road To Emmaus buzzes with the irrepressible anarchic spirit of a first or second feature. Premiered in Helsinki last October, the film had local critics calling Polonen a Finnish Fellini ...
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Reviews
The Diaries Of Vaslav Nijinsky
Dir: Paul Cox. Australia. 2002. 95 mins.One of prolific Paul Cox's most admired movies is his 1987 'docudrama' Vincent, a portrait of Van Gogh told by flowing imagery and close inspection of the paintings in situ, accompanied by voice over excerpts (read by John Hurt) from Vincent's letters to his ...
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Reviews
Stones (Piedras)
Dir: Ramon Salazar. Spain. 2001. 130mins.Some Spanish critics have seen Ramon Salazar as Pedro Almodovar's heir, and Stones certainly looks on paper like a sequel to the latter's 1991 comedy High Heels: it tells five women's interlocking stories through their feelings about their feet. The female-dominated subject, a light scattering ...
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Reviews
Coastlines
Dir Victor Nunez. US. 2002. 116min.Coastlines, Victor Nunez's latest film to be set on the unique landscape of Florida's unfamiliar coast, should be regarded as an instalment in his Panhandle trilogy, a follow-up to the poetic Ruby In Paradise (1993) and character-driven Ulee's Gold (1997), which featured Peter Fonda in ...
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Reviews
Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven
Dir: Daniel Burman. Argentina/Spain. 2001. 98mins.A brooding, fatalistic romance, faintly reminiscent of Julio Medem's Lovers Of The Arctic Circle or Vincent Ward's A Map Of The Human Heart in mood, Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven establishes third-time director Daniel Burman as a talent to watch. Burman's first two films, A ...