Latest reviews – Page 498
-
Reviews
Tosca
Dir: Benoit Jacquot. France-Italy-Germany-UK. 2001. 120mins.The latest director to accept the challenge of filming opera - a notoriously difficult genre - is French director Benoit Jacquot (Sade, Pas de Scandale). Jacquot has taken on Puccini's Tosca - a smart choice, as it is not only a crowd-pleaser, but also one ...
-
Reviews
Secret Ballot
Dir: Babak Payami. Italy-Iran-Canada-Switzerland. 2001. 105mins.If it weren't for the fact that another Iranian film (Jafar Panahi's The Circle) had scooped the Golden Lion last year, Secret Ballot would have been in with more than a shout for the top prize at this year's Venice shindig. As it was, Babak ...
-
Reviews
No Shame (Sin Verguenza)
Dir: Joaquin Oristrell. Spain. 2001. 116mins.Writer-director Joaquin Oristrell is not the first person to make a movie spoofing the world of movie-making, but he has succeeded in creating a fresh, fun and unpretentious film which - were it not for its Spanish language and lack of international stars - could ...
-
Reviews
Novocaine
Dir: David Atkins. US. 2001. 100minsA deeply conventional thriller that generates some unconventional laughs, Novocaine is an unpersuasive homage to film noir archetypes of gullible men and the wicked women who drive them to the edge of destruction. A classy cast and some bright comic notions are the virtues in ...
-
Reviews
Buffalo Soldiers
Dir: Gregor Jordan. UK/USA. 2001. 94mins"When there is peace, the warlike man attacks himself." The Friedrich Nietzsche quote provides the philosophy behind a biting black comedy exploring the military state of mind when the awful pressures of waging war are replaced by the dangerous tedium of keeping peace. The second ...
-
Reviews
Last Wedding
Dir: Bruce Sweeney. Canada. 2001. 100minsWriter-director Bruce Sweeney covers well-trodden territory in Last Wedding, a sour reflection on modern love that gathers attitude and edge as it gradually darkens from light comedy to bitter farce. Focusing on three Vancouver couples, it observes the decline and fall of their relationships with ...
-
Reviews
Quitting
Directed by Zhang Yang. China. 2001. 118min.Having one major national hit, Spicy Love Soup (1997), behind him and an international fest favourite, Shower (1999), confirming his talent, Zhang Yang is considered one of the most promising talents to come out of China in recent years. Quitting, a powerful docu-drama tracing ...
-
Reviews
Training Day
Dir: Antoine Fuqua. US. 2001. 123min. The essential narrative of Training Day, Antoine Fuqua's gritty, highly-intense crime policier, is quite familiar from other genre films, but there's no doubt that it's his most satisfying and technically accomplished picture to date. Cast as a corrupt cop for the first time in ...
-
Reviews
The Musketeer
Dir: Peter Hyams. US. 2001. 104mins. Though it boasts a potentially interesting international cast and a couple of acrobatic action scenes, The Musketeer is for the most part a muddled and forgettable new version of the classic Alexandre Dumas tale (more usually presented, of course, as The Three Musketeers) that ...
-
Reviews
L.I.E.
Dir Michael Cuesta. US2001. 97minutes One of the most powerful films to hit movie screens this year, L.I.E. (short for Long Island Expressway) is sure to generate controversy and spark heated debate wherever it plays. Slapped with an NC-17 rating, it is a coming-of-age drama about a troubled 15-year old ...
-
Reviews
Monsoon Wedding
Dir: Mira Nair. India. 2001. 115mins.Since the late 1980s, Mira Nair has acted as the official face of Indian cinema in the West. Most high-frequency cinemagoers in Europe and the US will have seen at least one of Nair's trio of exportable Indian features: Salaam Bombay! (1988), Mississippi Masala (1991) ...
-
Reviews
Jeepers Creepers
Dir: Victor Salva. US. 2001. 90 mins.There's a refreshing innocence to Jeepers Creepers, a stylish horror-thriller from Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope that indulges in the odd knowing genre joke but puts most of its energy into delivering good old-fashioned B-movie thrills. Teens raised on Scream and its imitators might ...
-
Reviews
Long Run
Dir: Jean Stewart. South Africa. 2001. 111mins.This attempt to create a simple triumph-against-adversity story, set against the world of long distance running in post-apartheid South Africa, has many good elements including a stand-out performance from Armin Mueller-Stahl and picaresque camerawork by British lenser Cinders Forshaw. However, the script fails to ...
-
Reviews
Me Without You
Dir: Sandra Goldbacher. UK. 2001. 107 mins. Sandra Goldbacher's follow-up to The Governess is a another female-centred period piece, although of a very different kind. A bittersweet comedy tracing a tempestuous friendship over 30 years, it's shrewdly observed and beautifully mounted, but suffers from an unevenness of tone and a ...
-
Reviews
L'amore Probabilmente ( Probably Love )
Dir: Giuseppe Bertolucci. Italy, 2001. 112 mins.Towards the end of Giuseppe Bertolucci's new film, the director's voice can be heard off-camera, pondering one of those fundamental questions: "Do I really want to make this film, or do I just want to dream it'" One can't help feeling that the latter ...
-
Reviews
Gas Attack
Dir: Kenny Glenaan. Scotland. 2001. 70 minsA troubling blend of stark facts and alarming fiction, Gas Attack belongs to a long tradition of controversial British documentary-dramas that includes the nuclear attack landmarks The War Game (1965) and Threads (1984). Told with all the urgency of a breaking news story, ...
-
Reviews
Summer Catch
Dir: Mike Tollin. US. 2001. 104mins. Summer Catch tries to cover a lot of bases: part baseball drama, part bawdy jock romp and part star-crossed romance, it ends up feeling like an Identikit summer movie. An attractive cast led by Freddie Prinze Jr might incite enough audience interest for a ...
-
Reviews
Bubble Boy
Dir Blair Hayes. US 2001. 84 minsWhile deliberately tasteless comedies are fairly common - think The Producers, Blazing Saddles or the recent spate of gross-out teen comedies - it is difficult to recall a film as unintentionally in bad taste as Bubble Boy. Ostensibly a coming-of-age story about a young ...
-
Reviews
Ghosts Of Mars
Dir: John Carpenter. US. 2001. 98 mins. A sci-fi/horror yarn with a touch of Western thrown in, Ghosts Of Mars has the kind of cheerful genre tackiness that we've come to expect lately from the John Carpenter 'brand.' What it doesn't have, in sufficient quantity at least, is the sort ...
-
Reviews
Delbaran
Dir: Abolfazl Jailili. Iran/Japan 2001. 96mins Socially poignant and often visually poetic, Delbaran, the new Iranian film from the gifted helmer Abolfazl Jailili, was one of Locarno Festival's few undisputed artistic highlights. Continuing the tradition of recent Iranian films about children, the story centres on a 14-year-old Afghan refugee, caught ...