Latest reviews – Page 503
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Reviews
Il Mestiere Delle Armi (The Profession of Arms)
Dir: Ermanno Olmi. Italy/France/Germany, 2001. 104 mins.Veteran Italian auteur Ermanno Olmi has come up with a hermetically-sealed historical epic that some will find ravishingly poetic, others merely boring. Not a few viewers will shuttle between these two states: something of an Italian Tarkowsky, Olmi has the rare talent of transfixing ...
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Reviews
Swordfish
Directed by Dominic Sena. US 2001. 100 mins.After a couple of major flops (Battleship Earth, Lucky Numbers), John Travolta is again in top form as the morally ambiguous protagonist of the techno thriller, Swordfish, playing a dangerously charismatic spy who propagates his own brand of patriotism. Boasting a sleek look ...
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Reviews
Pau And His Brother
Dir: Marc Recha. Spain/ France. 2000. 110 mins. Marc Recha's third feature starts from the principle of focussing on tiny moods and moments rather than grand dramatic set-pieces and allowing a story to evolve spontaneously instead of marshalling events in a structured sequence. While potentially fruitful, the result in this ...
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Reviews
Taurus
Dir: Alexander Sokurov. Russia. 2001.90 mins. Alexander Sokurov's examination of fallible tyranny continues. After Moloch, in which Hitler and Eva Braun conducted what was often a non-relationship at Berchtesgarden, comes Taurus, in which Lenin, crippled by a stroke, negotiates a living death in a requisitioned mansion surrounded by strangers no ...
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Reviews
Human Nature
Directed by Michel Gondry. US-France. 96 mins."Civilization and Its Discontents," Freud's well-known treatise about the eternal conflict between biology and sociology, could have served as the subtitle for the droll, often clever Human Nature, Charlie Kaufman's follow-up script to his celebrated Oscar-nominated film, Being John Malkovich. As staged by ...
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Reviews
Kandahar (Safar E Ghandehar)
Dir: Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Iran/ France. 2001. 85 mins. An astonishing journey through the archaic, rarely seen world of Afghanistan, Kandahar is a polished, sumptuously photographed indictment of conditions there. Aimed, with its part English-language soundtrack and scenes spelling out the political situation, squarely at an international audience it is, if ...
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Reviews
Under The Moonlight (Zir-E Nour-E Mah)
Dir: Reza Mir-Karimi. Iran. 2001. 96mins. The accessible face of Iranian cinema, Reza Mir-Karimi's second feature Under The Moonlight (Zir-E Nour-E Mah) tells the involving story of a young seminary student's crisis of vocation. Less austere and forbidding than many of the most critically lauded Iranian features of ...
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Reviews
Pearl Harbor
Dir: Michael Bay. US.2001. 182 mins.The best that can besaid about Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, his colossal take on one of the most tumultuous events of Americanhistory, is that it's decidedly not a popcorn summer movie in the currentsense. Quite the opposite: Deviating from the recent spate of postmodern,intentionally anachronistic ...
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Reviews
Angel Eyes
Dir: Luis Mandoki. US 2001. 115 mins.A muddled blend of a supernatural thriller, romantic melodrama, and urban police-crimer, Angel Eyes, Jennifer Lopez' latest disappointing star vehicle, tries to do too much to little effect. Lifting a number of ideas and characters from Ghost and City Of Angels, ...
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Reviews
Apocalypse Now Redux
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola. US 2001. 197 min (without credits). Apocalypse Now Redux, Francis Ford Coppola's expanded and definitive version of his dazzling 1979 war epic, reaffirms its status as one of the highlights of the new American cinema and one of Coppola's undisputed masterpieces, along with The Godfather movies. ...
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Reviews
Shrek
Dirs: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. US. 2001. 90 mins.Shrek, DreamWorks' new enchanting animated feature, provides constant delights for the eye, while never neglecting the mind. The first American animation to receive its premiere as a competition entry at the Cannes Festival in half-a-century (since Peter Pan), Shrek represents a ...
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Reviews
The Man Who Wasn't There
Dir: Joel Coen. US. 2001. 117 mins.With their latest foray into film noir, Joel and Ethan Coen continue to explore a recurrent motif of their work: The destructive force of unbridled individualism, or more specifically, greed as the dark side of the American Dream. Arguably their most ambitious film since ...
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Reviews
Luhrmann's Sensory Overload
Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Australia/US. 2001. 124 minAussie wonder boy Baz Luhrmann continues to break rules and to shock in his new tragi-comic musical, Moulin Rouge his most audaciously innovative feature to date. Like his stylized dance melodrama Strictly Ballroom and his postmodern Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, the new musical, ...
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Reviews
Moulin Rouge
Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Australia/US. 2001. 124 minAussie wonder boy Baz Luhrmann continues to break rules and to shock in his new tragi-comic musical, Moulin Rouge his most audaciously innovative feature to date. Like his stylized dance melodrama Strictly Ballroom and his postmodern Shakespearean adaptation, Romeo + Juliet, the new musical, ...
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Reviews
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Dir: John Madden. UK-US-FR. 2001. 125 minsWhile its aspirations and ingredients should ensure a strong release in all territories where the original Louis de Bernieres novel was triumphant, Captain Corelli's Mandolin curiously lacks harmony for a work with music as one of its core values. There is discord between its ...
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Reviews
Yamakasi
Benny Crick in ParisDirs: Ariel Zeitoun, Julien Seri. France. 2001. 90mins.With his Taxi and Taxi 2 notched among the all-time French commercial blockbusters, Luc Besson (in his capacity as producer-writer but not director) appears to have struck a new vein of box office gold. Yamakasi has tapped into the same ...
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Reviews
Joe Dirt
Dir: Dennie Gordon. US. 2001. 86mins.Saturday Night Live alumnus David Spade who, despite many tries, has failed to front a hit movie (unlike fellow SNL-ers Adam Sandler and Mike Myers), makes another stab at a crossover with this comedy vehicle, co-written with Black Sheep and Tommy Boy collaborator Fred Wolf. ...
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Reviews
Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles
Dir: Simon Wincer. Aus/US. 2001. 95mins.The reappearance of Paul Hogan's hugely popular creation Crocodile Dundee will solve the Easter holidays movie problem for many Australian families. Unashamedly soft-centred and sweet-natured, Hogan/Dundee has aimed to include "the kiddies and the grannies" in his audiences, so Good triumphs over Evil, the jokes ...
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Reviews
The Brothers
Dir: Gary Hardwick. US. 2001. 98mins.Writer-director Gary Hardwick has dubbed The Brothers, his serio-comedy about sex, love and friendship among African-American men, 'Refusing To Exhale'. Considering the theme and tone of his movie, it is an apt label that plays upon Waiting To Exhale, the 1995 film about black middle-class ...
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Reviews
Blow
Dir: Ted Demme. US. 2001. 120mins.Using Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling masterpiece about the porn industry as a model, Ted Demme's Blow is a solid but unexciting epic about the rise of the US cocaine subculture, told through real-life figure George Jung (now in jail). Johnny Depp gives a ...