Latest reviews – Page 499
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Reviews
Gabriel And Me
Dir: Usan Prayad. UK. 2001. 86 minsAdapted from Lee Hall's award-winning 1996 radio play I Luv You Jimmy Spud, Gabriel And Me is a maudlin coming of age drama tackling familiar Hall themes of bereavement, family unity and the transforming power of the imagination. Despite sensitive handling from director Usan ...
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Reviews
Happy Now
Dir: Philippa Collie Cousins. Wales. 98mins. 2001The guilty legacy of past indiscretions provides the backdrop to Happy Now, an atmospheric tale of smalltown secrets and deceptive appearances where the eccentricity is self-conscious and the elaborate mechanics of the plot fail to convince. Polished and well performed, it will make superior ...
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Reviews
Mostly Martha
Dir: Sandra Nettelbeck. Germany. 2001. 107 mins.German 'food' melodrama Mostly Martha may be utterly predictable but it was one of the few world premieres at the Locarno Film Festival which showed strong potential to break out of the festival circuit and European arthouse markets. Set mainly in the kitchen of ...
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Reviews
Filthy Earth
Dir: Andrew Kotting. UK. 2001. 111minsAndrew Kotting's follow up to his quirky, much admired road movie documentary Gallivant offers an extreme vision of rural hardship. Inspired by Emile Zola's La Terre (Earth), it saturates the screen with mud and muck, blood and viscera to create an unrelenting portrait of squalor, ...
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Reviews
The Emperor's New Clothes
Dir: Alan Taylor. UK. 2001. 105 mins. Alan Taylor's 'what if' reverie on the last days of Napoleon, The Emperor's New Clothes had its world premiere in the best possible circumstances for such a middlebrow entertainment: under the stars in Locarno's Piazza Grande. Originally titled My Napoleon, the film turns ...
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Reviews
Lucky Break
Dir: Peter Cattaneo. UK. 2001. 108minsThe Full Monty has been an impossible act to follow. Producer Umberto Pasolini's whimsical follow up Closer To You and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy's depressing The Darkest Light were minor footnotes to the ongoing global phenomenon of the steelworker strippers. Director Peter Cattaneo has waited longer ...
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Reviews
The Lawless Heart
Dirs: Neil Hunter and Tom Hunslinger. UK. 2001. 99 min.A middlebrow sensibility informs The Lawless Heart, a soft, mildly enjoyable melodrama about a web of tangled, constantly shifting relationships among the residents of a small, provincial English town. NeilHunter and Tom Hunslinger, who earlier made the 1995 gay film, Boyfriends, ...
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Reviews
Osmosis Jones
Dirs: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly; anim dirs: Piet Kroon, Tom Sito. US. 2001. 98 mins.The Farrelly brothers and Bill Murray are the names that jump out of the credits, that promising-sounding combination plays a relatively minor role in Osmosis Jones, an animated/live action comedy that represents Warner's latest attempt to ...
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Reviews
The Cat's Meow
Dir: Peter Bogdanovich. Germany-UK. 2001. 111 mins.Despite some moments of nasty, old-fashioned fun and a shining performance by Kirsten Dunst (pictured), The Cat's Meow, Peter Bogdanovich's eagerly awaited comebackafter close to a decade without a theatrical feature to his name, is a disappointment. Assuming the shape of a trashy Sunday ...
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Reviews
The Bank
Dir: Robert Connolly. Australia. 2001. 106 mins.This quality thriller's super-villain doesn't threaten the world from the usual fortified island - but although he's merely CEO of a profits-obsessed Melbourne bank, global domination is still his evil aim. Former successful producer (The Boys, The Monkey's Mask) Connolly's first feature as writer/director ...
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Reviews
American Pie 2
Dir: JB Rogers. US. 2001. 105 mins.The fine balance between sweetness and grossness achieved in American Pie is tipped entirely in favour of the latter in this disappointing sequel - the ultimate exercise in oversexed frat boy preening which will disgust as many as it delights. Universal Pictures, already on ...
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Reviews
The Others
Dir Alejandro Amenabar. US-Spain. 2001. 103 minsSumptuously crafted, with moody eeriness and almost surreal visual imagery, Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar's The Others is a terrific supernatural thriller that builds and sustains its considerable suspense, without ever relying on violence or special effects. Cast in a role she was born to ...
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Reviews
The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion
Dir: Woody Allen. US. 2001. 103 min.Far superior to hisprevious comic crime capers (Manhattan Murder Mystery and last year's Small Time Crooks), Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is an entertaining period piece, poking fun at the hypnosis craze that mesmerized people of the Jazz Era and continues ...
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Reviews
Original Sin
Dir: Michael Cristofer. US. 2001. 116 mins. Angelina Jolie's second big release of the summer is a very different kettle of pescado from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Written and directed by Michael Cristofer, who previously steered Jolie's breakthrough performance in Gia, Original Sin wraps a plot from the world of ...
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Reviews
The Parole Officer
Dir: John Duigan. UK. 2001. 90 mins. Few television comedians manage to become film stars, and fewer still succeed outside their home turf. But The Parole Officer should serve lengthy time at the British box-office on the strength of Steve Coogan's huge popularity as a stand-up comic and small-screen character ...
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Reviews
The Princess Diaries
Dir: Garry Marshall. US.2001. 115 mins.Shot on the same soundstage that was used for Mary Poppins, the Disney comedy that catapulted Julie Andrews to international stardom, The Princess Diaries is an enjoyable fairy tale that in its mores andmessage is not that different from that Andrews' 1964 Oscar-winning picture. This ...
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Reviews
Rush Hour 2
Dir: Brett Ratner. US. 2001. 87 min.Neither terribly exciting asan actioner, nor sufficiently funny as a comedy, Rush Hour 2 re-teams the odd couple of the first film, theendlessly bickering Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, placing them in the most routineand movie-ish situations imaginable. Coldly calculated, but still rather flat,the ...
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Reviews
Planet Of The Apes
Dir: Tim Burton. US.2001. 120 min.Tim Burton's singularcinematic vision is very much missing from Planet Of The Apes, his eagerly-awaited remake of the 1968 cultclassic. Part sci-fi, part action-adventure, part ape/human romantic melodrama,but not particularly satisfying on any of these levels, it's a truly mediocrepicture that suffers in several departments: ...
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Reviews
Spirited Away
Dir: HayaoMiyazaki. Japan. 2001. 125 mins. Though aimed,says director Hayao Miyazaki, "at ten-year-old girls," his new film Spirited Away (Sen toChihiro no Kamikakushi)is a masterwork, the latest and best in a long line from Japan's premieranimator. Expected to earn Y20bn ($162m) and break the Japanese box officerecord for a domestic ...