Latest reviews – Page 491
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Reviews
John Q
Dir: Nick Cassavetes. US 2002. 116mins.Socially relevant messages, simplistic action elements and teary melodramatic threads are manipulatively and unsuccessfully mixed in Nick Cassavetes' John Q, a film that tries to provide a "hard" look at an honest, working-class man, who loses control in his valiant effort to save his child's ...
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Reviews
Lost In La Mancha
Dirs: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe. UK. 2001. 89mins.Lost In La Mancha is an enormously entertaining and poignant antidote to the bland "making of" films usually found as DVD add-ons and television plugumentaries. Instead of the traditional gushing interviews with cast and crew, this is the chronicle of an unmitigated disaster: ...
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Reviews
Uncle Frank
Dir: Matthew Ginsburg. US, 2002. 84 mins.The first documentary to be produced by Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions, Uncle Frank is an affectionate, touching and often hilariously funny portrait of the director's octagenarian uncle, who plays the electric piano in old people's homes. Although it deals frankly (so to speak) ...
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Reviews
Temptations
Dir: Zoltan Kamondi. Hungary. 2002. 88mins.Hungary is back after a long absence in the Berlinale competition with an entry that attempts to cover as many of the burning Magyar issues of the hour as its 88 minutes running time will allow. So many, in fact - from generation gap to ...
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Reviews
Return To Never Land
Dirs: Robin Budd, Donovan Cook. US. 2001. After turning out a string of video sequels to recent Disney hits like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, Walt Disney Television Animation does a more than respectable job on this animated theatrical sequel to the studio's beloved 1953 classic Peter Pan. ...
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Reviews
Sound Of Brazil (Moro No Brasil)
Dir: Mika Kaurismaki. Ger/Fin/Fra/Brazil, 2002. 105 mins.A well-known European arthouse director goes on a musical pilgrimage in a Latin American country. Sounds familiar, no' Echoes of Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club come thick and fast in this roots-of-Samba documentary by cuddly Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki. But in the end, ...
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Reviews
Safe Conduct (Laissez Passer)
Dir: Bertrand Tavernier. France. 2001. 170mins.An ambitious, enormously detailed portrait of a complex and (internationally, at least) little known footnote of World War II, Safe Conduct observes the film-makers working at the Continental, a German studio set up in Paris to produce French movies under the Occupation. Bertrand Tavernier's contention ...
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Reviews
Minor Mishaps (Sma Ulykker)
Dir: Annette K Olesen. Denmark. 2002. 109mins.That peculiarly Danish brand of bittersweet, intimate comedy finds its latest expression in Minor Mishaps, the story of a turbulent family reunion that combines many familiar Dogme elements (although it is not, in the strict sense, a Dogme film) with Mike Leigh's preparation for ...
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Reviews
Happy Times (Xingfu Shiguang)
Dir: Zhang Yimou. China/US. 2000. 96mins The first film from Edward R Pressman and Terrence Malick's Sunflower Productions, Zhang Yimou 's Happy Times is a Chaplinesque sentimental comedy which has its moments of greatness. Even during the more pedestrian scenes, it is difficult not to be warmed by ...
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Reviews
Collateral Damage
Dir: Andrew Davis. US. 2002. 108mins.If it were not for the September 11 terrorist attacks, Collateral Damage - Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest action vehicle - would have been dismissed by critics as yet another popcorn picture, using terrorism as a cheap plot device to advance its gung-ho ...
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Reviews
America So Beautiful
Dir: Babak Shokrian. US. 2001. 91mins.There's an incontestable topical relevance to this tale of young Iranians in Los Angeles in 1979 whose dream of owning their own disco evaporates after the fall of the Shah and the American Embassy hostage drama in Tehran. Having studied in California and worked there ...
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Reviews
Travelling Birds (Le Peuple Migrateur)
Dir: Jacques Perrin. Fr/Ger/Sp. 2001. 97mins.Travelling Birds offers audiences a rare chance to fly like a bird without recourse to mind-expanding drugs. This is the third in a trilogy of big-screen nature films produced - and in this case directed - by former French matinee idol Jacques Perrin. Microcosmos, the ...
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Reviews
A Rumor Of Angels
Dir. Peter O'Fallon US. 2000 104 mins.A sentimental drama about coming to terms with the loss of a loved one, A Rumor Of Angels boasts a first-rate performance from Vanessa Redgrave as an eccentric old woman who claims to have a spiritual connection with the afterlife. Redgrave and a talented ...
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Reviews
Paradox Lake
Dir: Przemyslaw 'Shemie' Reut. US. 2002. 85mins.Neither documentary nor fully fledged drama, Paradox Lake is cinema verite at its most infuriating. Shemie Reut's experimental feature is for the most part tedious and trying, yet its terrifically clever final act hints at what it might have been. It's one of those ...
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Reviews
No Regrets (Nichts Bereuen)
Dir: Benjamin Quabeck. Ger. 2001. 104mins.A blend of comedy and pathos, No Regrets is a light-hearted coming of age story that flags up its lead, newcomer Daniel Bruehl, as one of Germany's upcoming talents to watch. The film has done well in German-speaking territories, where it has taken DM 468,065 ...
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Reviews
Eight Women (Huit Femmes)
Dir: Francois Ozon. France. 2002. 103mins.Clearly not one to be stuffed into a stylistic straitjacket, the erratic, highly talented Francois Ozon has flamboyant fun with Eight Women (Huit Femmes), an old-fashioned Agatha Christie-ish whodunnit made over as high camp with songs and an all-female cast. Although it will no ...
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Reviews
Heaven
Dir: Tom Tykwer. 2001. Germany/US. 97mins.If Run Lola Run was Tom Tykwer's breakthrough film, then the Miramax-backed Heaven is his first big commercial test. The message that we are in very different territory from his smart and stylish 1999 indie hit is made clear in the posters plastering Tykwer's hometown ...
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Reviews
One Hour Photo
Dir: Mark Romanek. US. 2002. 96 mins.Actor Robin Williams gets a wonderful opportunity to stretch (to use Hollywood jargon) in Mark Romanek's feature directorial debut, One Hour Photo, playing a serious dramatic role that deviates from the two screen images that have defined his career: as a funny, ...
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Reviews
Love Liza
Dir Todd Louiso. US 2002. 89mins.Indie icon Philip Seymour Hoffman (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) renders yet another stellar performance in Todd Louiso's delicately directed Love Liza, elevating the film way above its narrow narrative scope and small-scale production. An actor vehicle, written specifically for Hoffman by his older brother Gordy, ...
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Reviews
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Dir: Phillip Noyce. Australia. 2002. 92 mins.It's generally accepted that films about aboriginal Australians are local box office poison, which unfairly adds a layer of difficulty to the marketing of Phillip Noyce's excellent homecoming production. International audiences will have fewer problems with his elemental tale, which cuts raw into the ...