Latest reviews – Page 504
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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 ...
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Reviews
Spy Kids
Dir: Robert Rodriguez. US. 2001. 90 mins.Best known for indie action flicks like El Mariachi and From Dusk Til Dawn, Robert Rodriguez turns his hand to family adventure with Spy Kids, aiming to mix the effects and thrills of James Bond with the warmth and colour of more traditional children's ...
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Reviews
La Stanza Del Figlio
La Stanza Del FiglioDir: Nanni Moretti. Italy/France. 2001. 98minsIf Nanni Moretti is the Italian Woody Allen, then La Stanza Del Figlio is his Interiors. The Moretti faithful expect at least three or four memorable gags per film, but although it has a few moments of comic relief, La Stanza Del ...
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Reviews
The Big Martian
Dir: Antonio Hernandez. Spain. 2000. 90minsIt remains a mystery why this original, entertaining and technically astute film experiment has not resonated with Spanish audiences. Despite a wide release by UIP on 152 screens, ticket sales of just $310,000 in the first two weeks placed The Big Martian well outside the ...
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Reviews
Exit Wounds
Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2001. 100 mins. Looking to make a comeback after a run of commercial disappointments, Steven Seagal teams up on Exit Wounds with action king producer Joel Silver and hot rapper DMX. It's a canny move which should bring in both older white males and younger black ...
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Reviews
Bridget Jones's Diary
Dir: Sharon Maguire. UK. 2001. 90minsTBC.Bridget Jones's bestselling diaries made the fictional thirtysomething singleton Britain's most successful under-achiever of recent years, and the screen version of her intimate journal bears all the signs of becoming the UK's biggest film hit since Notting Hill. Domestically, massive advance publicity and media attention ...
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Reviews
Blame It On Voltaire
Dir: Abdellatif Kechiche. France.130mins.Honoured as the best first film atlast year's Venice Film Festival, Blame It On Voltaire is a flawed butaffecting account of an illegal immigrant's adventures in Paris. Though localfilms by and about North Africans (notably Algerians) have long been part ofthe French film scene, first-time writer-director Kechiche ...
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Reviews
Blow Dry
Dir: Paddy Breathnach. US-UK. 2001. 91minsA large ensemble of talented actors, including Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson and Rachel Griffiths, is totally wasted in the disappointing comedy Blow Dry, written by The Full Monty screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy. Meant to be a funny satire of an annual British hairdressing championship, Blow Dry ...
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Reviews
Brotherhood Of The Wolf
Dir: Cristophe Gans. France. 2001. 143mins.Hailed as the prototype for a new genre-bending kind of popular European cinema, Brotherhood Of The Wolf is a crazy quilt of historical romance, horror movie, frontier saga, conspiracy thriller and martial arts actioner. One can only admire the sheer chutzpah of writer-director Christophe Gans, ...
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Reviews
The Mexican
Dir: Gore Verbinski. US. 2001. 125mins.The first pairing of Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, Hollywood's beloved stars, proves to be a mixed blessing in Gore Verbinski's The Mexican, a mishmash of a movie in which different genres and different styles compete aggressively and strenuously for the viewers' attention. Although the ...
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Reviews
Mullet
Writer-director David Caesar's third feature, his first since the admired Idiot Box (1996), is a small-budget, small-scale character study surprisingly showing in widescreen 35mm and six-track Dolby. Though rich in Australian idiom and seldom exploited southern New South Wales coastal scenery, Mullet's theatrical ambitions seem overstretched. Its true home is ...
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Reviews
Risk
Dir: Alan White. Australia. 2000. 90mins. Award-winning commercials and music video director AlanWhite made his 1999 feature debut with the grittily realistic ErskinevilleKings, set in a crumbling inner-suburban Sydney. With Risk he visitsthe top end of town - ritzy apartments, sleek corporate offices with powerfulcityscape views - but fails ...
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Reviews
15 Minutes
Dir. John Herzfeld. US. 2001. 120 mins.Andy Warhol's prophecy that everyone will one day achieve their own quarter-hour of fame gets yet another Hollywood workout in John Herzfeld's actioner, 15 Minutes - this time with two foreign criminals as media-hungry badasses. Robert De Niro, well-cast as a superstar homicide detective, ...
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Reviews
See Spot Run
Dir: John Whitesell. US. 2001. 94 mins.Aimed squarely at an audience of families with younger children, See Spot Run does not waste much effort on subtleties. The comedy is a mix of basic slapstick and potty humour, while the plot spins a sugary romance around a perky blonde, an orphaned ...
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Reviews
Monkeybone
Dir: Henry Selick. US. 2000. 92mins.For all its manic energy and elaborately-designed fantasy elements, Monkeybone, director Henry Selick's live-action follow-up to his acclaimed animated outings The Nightmare Before Christmas and James And The Giant Peach, feels disappointingly flat. The film (based on the graphic novel Dark Town) appears to be ...
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Reviews
JSA - Joint Security Area
Screened at Berlin (Competition). Dir: Park Chan-Wook. South Korea. 2000. 110mins. If nothing else, Korean director Park Chan-Wook's JSA - Joint Security Area can boast a highly unusual setting for its drama - the border between North and South Korea, the last flashpoint of the defunct Cold War. It is ...
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Reviews
Betelnut Beauty
Screened at Berlin (Competition) Dir: Lin Cheng-sheng. Taiwan-China-France. 2000. 106mins.Young people struggling to find a meaningful life in the urban sprawl of Asian megacities like Taipei and Beijing is not a new premisefor a film, but Lin Cheng-sheng's Betelnut Beauty is a standoutnonetheless. Fully deserving the best director award ...
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Reviews
Ignorant Fairies
Screened at Berlin (Competition).Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek. Italy/France. 2000. 105mins.The clash between cultures has been the pivotal focus in Turkish-born - but who has lived in Rome since 1978 - director Ferzan Ozpetek's work. His first feature, Hamam - The Turkish Bath (Il Bagno Turco), about a Italian man's sexual ...
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Reviews
MallBoy
Dir: Vincent Giarrusso. Australia. 2000. 85 mins.The overlit candy-coloured shopping mall where 14 year old Shaun and his aimless school-skipping friends spend a large part of their days is so shockingly familiar it might be anywhere in the developed or semi-developed world, which gives this small-scale Australian movie a genuinely ...