Latest reviews – Page 494
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Reviews'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring': Review
Dir Peter Jackson. US.2001. 179 min.Visually striking, thematically grave, and morally weighty, Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, is a miracle of a movie: a three-hour fantasy-action-adventure that not only faithfully captures the spirit of its respectable source material, the ...
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Reviews
Ocean's Eleven
Dir Steven Soderbergh.US. 2001. 116 min.Steven Soderbergh's astonishing artistic renewal, that began three years ago with Out Of Sight and The Limey, and reached anunprecedented height last year with Erin Brockovich (for which he received a directing Oscar nomination) and Traffic (which landed him the coveted prize), begins to show ...
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Reviews
Mad Love (Juana La Loca)
Dir: Vicente Aranda. Sp-It-Port. 117mins. A costume drama driven by lead Pilar Lopez de Ayala's impacting central performance, Mad Love (Juana La Loca) is Spain's official entry for the foreign language Oscar nominations, having beaten out sexier options such as Penelope Cruz film No News From God and Julio ...
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Reviews
The 51st State
Dir: Ronny Yu. UK/Canada. 2001. 92minsA lurid, laddish, bad ass romp, 51st State is so primed and pumped up that It's almost laughable. A wild-eyed enthusiasm for the delights of bloodshed, body fluids and expletive-filled banter should hit the mark with a target audience of young males who like their ...
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Reviews
Behind Enemy Lines
Dir: John Moore. US 2001. 105 mins The US military couldn't have asked for a more effective recruitment tool than this rousing, high-concept action feature about a young navy pilot trapped behind enemy lines in Bosnia, who must outwit and evade his legion of pursuers until the Marines can arrive ...
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Reviews
The Affair Of The Necklace
Dir. Charles Shyer. US 2001. 117mins.Much of the dramatic juice and historical intrigue has been drained out of The Affair Of The Necklace, an old-fashioned costume drama that suffers from being stiff, stuffy and banal. In her first major role after a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for Boys Don't ...
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Reviews
Betty Fisher And Other Stories
Dir: Claude Miller. France-Canada. 2001. 102minsVeteran director Claude Miller brings a calm control and authority to the elaborately plotted Betty Fisher Et Autres Histoires, a demanding blend of psychological thriller and ensemble melodrama. Slow-burning but always absorbing, the film ambitiously attempts to cover a wide range of characters and developments ...
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Reviews
Black Knight
Dir: Gil Junger. US. 2001. 93 mins. After the commercial disappointment of his team-up with Danny DeVito in What's the Worst That Could Happen', Black Knight sees comedian Martin Lawrence returning to the kind of solo shtick that turned his 2000 vehicle Big Momma's House (another Regency Enterprises production for ...
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Reviews
The Simian Line
Dir: Linda Yellen. USA 2000. 106mins The cast members in this uneven ensemble comedy might as well be in different pictures; in fact, it's a pity they're not since the film starring Lynn Redgrave is worth watching, while the one featuring William Hurt and Samantha Mathis is not. Given that ...
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Reviews
The Royal Tenenbaums
Dir Wes Anderson. US 2001. 108mins.The same distinctive sensibility that informed Wes Anderson's first two innovative films, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, is very much in evidence in his new serio-comedy, The Royal Tenenbaums, except that the scope is more ambitious, the budget bigger and the cast more glamorous. With ...
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Reviews
Seafood (Haixian)
Dir: Zhu Wen. China. 2001. 84mins. This idiosyncratic and extremely personal debut film by the poet-novelist Zhu Wen won't be to all tastes, but its offbeat sensibility and intriguing glimpses of a little-seen side of contemporary China earned it the Special Prize in the Cinema of the Present competition at ...
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Reviews
Shallow Hal
Dirs: Bobby and Peter Farrelly. US 2001. 113mins.Bobby and Peter Farrelly, masters of the outrageous and gross-out comedy (Dumb And Dumber, There's Something About Mary) take an artistic step backwards with Shallow Hal, a soft, disappointingly sentimental comedy about the true nature of beauty, or the gap between physical surfaces ...
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Reviews
Gosford Park
Dir Robert Altman. UK-US 2001. 138mins.Content and style converge smoothly and brilliantly in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, a luxuriant period drama that applies the Agatha Christie murder mystery format to a rigorous analysis of English society during the early 1930s. This terrifically accomplished film, easily Altman's best work ...
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Reviews
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone
Dir: Chris Columbus. UK-US 2001. 152mins.JK Rowling's Harry Potter books have become such a global literary and cultural phenomena (over 100 million copies sold in more than 46 languages) that it's almost impossible to treat the franchise's first film without disregarding the juggernaut hype that has touted it as the ...
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Reviews
Smell Of Camphor, Fragrance Of Jasmine
Dir: Bahman Farmanara. Iran. 2001. 93mins. Bahman Farmanara's first film in 20 years is a semi-autobiographical meditation on death and art whose mordant comic tone is an acquired taste but still a rather elegant one. With the way already paved by international festival acclaim, the film's immediate appeal will be ...
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Reviews
Saturday (Sabado)
Dir: Juan Villegas. Argentina. 2001. 72mins. A brisk deadpan comedy about urban alienation and foundering relationships, Saturday generated mildly positive critical word-of-mouth in Venice earlier this year, where it played in the Cinema Of The Present section. Too lightweight and insufficiently original to make much impact in commercial terms, its ...
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Reviews
The Mystic Masseur
Dir: Ismail Merchant. UK. 2001. 117mins.The Mystic Masseur plays to the proven strengths of the Merchant-Ivory team: like much of their previous work, it depicts the contrast and clash of cultures in an exotic arena, backed by a literary pedigree, in this case VS Naipaul's first novel. A significant advance ...
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Reviews
The One
The OneDir: James Wong. US. 2001. 80mins. The One offers a double dose of Asian martial arts star Jet Li but shortchanges its audience in just about every other department. After the promising box office showings in the US of last year's Romeo Must Die ($56m) and this past summer's ...
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Reviews
Domestic Disturbance
Domestic DisturbanceReviewed by Jean OppenheimerDir: Harold Becker. US 2001. 91minsIf Domestic Disturbance is indicative of the current state of Hollywood thrillers, then the genre is suffering from a bad case of fatigue. Coming on the heels of Swordfish and Battlefield Earth, John Travolta appears to be in a bit of ...
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Reviews
Vajont
Dir: Renzo Martinelli. Italy/France. 2001. 116 mins.Vajont is an all-European disaster movie. Although it's tempting to shuffle the word-order, producer-director Renzo Martinelli's $8.2 million production is not an all-European movie disaster: it's just a mediocre example of the genre. Although it boasts a couple of French co-stars (Daniel Auteil and ...