Latest reviews – Page 502
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Reviews
Baby Boy
Dir: John Singleton. US. 2001. 130 mins.The innersoul of a young, immature black man is placed under scrutiny in JohnSingleton's Baby Boy, a companion piece but not a sequel, to his breakthrough film,Boyz N' The Hood,which exactly ten years ago made a splash in the film world. Revisiting thesame ...
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Reviews
Dr Dolittle 2
Dir: Steve Carr. US. 2001. 85 mins. It's been three years since Eddie Murphy and co successfully reinvented Dr Dolittle - the man who talks to the animals - for a modern film audience by using computer effects to allow the animals to talk, cheekily, back. Dr Dolittle 2 efficiently ...
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Reviews
Strictly Sinatra
Dir: Peter Capaldi. UK. 2001. 97 mins.Peter Capaldi, an actor who made award-winning short film It's A Wonderful Life, makes an assured directorial debut with this darkly comic drama which he also wrote. Boosted by appealing performances by two of Britain's finest young actors, Ian Hart and Kelly Macdonald, and ...
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Reviews
The Fast And The Furious
Dir: Rob Cohen. US. 2001. 108 mins.From the first frame to the last, Rob Cohen's The Fast And The Furious is a B- movie, elevated by A-level stunt work and roaring cars that test the limit, but dragged down to C-level characterisation with a formulaic plot and schematic hero, anti-hero ...
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Reviews
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Dir: Steven Spielberg.US. 2001. 144 minAlways captivating towatch, and often emotionally touching, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: ArtificialIntelligence is one of hismost ambitious, intelligent, and problematic films, and not only due to itsvaliant effort to blend two disparate cinematic sensibilities. Easily thissummer's most eagerly awaited movie, A.I. qualifies as a media ...
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Reviews
Pauline & Paulette
Dir: Lieven Debrauwer. Belgium/France/Netherlands. 2001. 78minsA bittersweet little heart-warmer on the ties that bind four sisters, Pauline & Paulette marks a promising feature debut from writer-director Lieven Debrauwer who won the Prize Du Jury at Cannes in 1997 for his short film Leonie. Lightly humorous and quietly perceptive as it ...
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Reviews
Martha... Martha
Dir: Sandrine Veysset. France. 2001. 97 mins.Martha... Martha resumes many of the themes of Sandrine Veysset's previous work, in particular her first feature, Will It Snow At Christmas': deeply damaged families living on the poverty line, a mother with suicidal tendencies and, more generally, the pervasive undercurrent of emotional violence ...
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Reviews
Sobibor
Dir. Claude Lanzmann, France 2001, 95 mins.A companion piece for his celebrated 1985 masterpiece Shoah, this new documentary combines material shot in 1979 but never incorporated in Claude Lanzmann's major opus, with some additional footage taken in Poland recently. Dealing with the uprising that took place at the date and ...
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Reviews
No Such Thing
Dir: Hal Hartley. US 2001. 101 mins.Instead of arresting a downward spiralling career, No Such Thing, Hal Hartley's new film and latest folly, demonstrates what happens to an iconoclastic film-maker when he neglects his instinctive talent for small, quirky, offbeat films and decides to go uproariously big. Indeed, a ...
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Reviews
ABC Africa
Dir: Abbas Kiarostami. Iran. 2001. 83 mins. Commissioned to raise international awareness of the work being done by the Uganda Women's Effort To Save Orphans (UWESO), ABC Africa is a surprisingly straightforward return to the documentary form from Palme D'Or winner Abbas Kiarostami. Largely eschewing the heartache and misery ...
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Reviews
Slogans
Dir. Gjergj Xhuvani. France-Albania 2001. 90 mins.The last of the Balkan countries to rid itself of communist bliss, Albania has very good reasons to celebrate its new-found freedom of expression, as it is does here with this satire on enforced political indoctrination. Verging somewhere between realism of the kind that ...
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Reviews
Trouble Every Day
Dir: Claire Denis. France. 2000. 99 mins. Claire Denis tiptoes perilously close to Golden Turkey land with this ponderous study of insatiable desire and twisted eroticism, which will command initial interest from buffs on the strength of its director's previously impressive track record (Chocolat, I Can't Sleep, Beau Travail) ...
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Reviews
Storytelling
Dir: Todd Solondz. US. 2001. 87 mins.The same darkly humorous sensibility that defined Todd Solondz's earlier pictures is at work in his new satire, Storytelling, except that the novelty has worn out and the notoriously acerbic vision is now contained in a deliberately fractured narrative that leaves a lot to ...
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Reviews
Pulse
Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Japan. 118 minsKiyoushi Kurosawa's follow up to films like Cure and Charisma is his most commercial film and one that makes the current spate of teen-targeted shockers from Japan seem about as scary as the latest urban legend told around the school-lunch table. Watching Pulse is like ...
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Reviews
Hijack Stories
Dir: Oliver Schmitz. South Africa. 2001. 94 mins A compelling focus on black identity in the new South Africa, Hijack Stories marks a welcome return to feature films from director Oliver Schmitz 14 years after his award-winning debut Mapantsula. The generally polished handling of topical, thought-provoking material means that it ...
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Reviews
Lantana
Dir: Ray Lawrence. Australia. 2001. 120 mins.Opening the 48th Sydney Film Festival, the world premiere of Lantana was received by a packed and celebrity-strewn audience with pin-drop intensity and warm regard. Ray Lawrence is an outstanding commercials director but this is his first feature since the highly regarded Bliss, the ...
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Reviews
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Directed by Simon West. US 2001. 120 mins.Displaying boobs, brawn, and brain (in this order), Angelina Jolie renders such a splashy performance in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that she not only elevates the video-game turned big-screen adventure a notch or two above its routine storyline, but also makes the entire ...