Latest – Page 62
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Reviews
Filth and Wisdom
Dir: Madonna. UK. 2008. 81 minsContrary to billing, there's not much filth and precious little wisdom in Madonna's directing debut. Even so, you have to applaud her for daring to get behind a camera, given that her career in front of it has been strewn with clunkers. While Filth And ...
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Reviews
The Brøken
Dir/scr: Sean Ellis. UK/France. 2008. 88mins.In his second feature The Brøken the talented British director Sean Ellis (Cashback) traffics in a melange of styles and historical references that range from the poetic horror works of Jean Cocteau (Orpheus) to the social malaise and extreme alienation of Roman Polanski (The Tennant), ...
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Reviews
Shot In Bombay
Dir: Liz Mermin, UK/US 2007. 99mins.Fact proves racier than fiction in Shot In Bombay, Liz Mermin's documentary on the filming of a Bollywood action movie based on true events. The film in question is Shootout At Lokhandwala, director Apoorva Lakhia's 2007 thriller inspired by a real-life Mumbai gun battle between ...
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Reviews
St Trinian's
Dirs: Oliver Parker & Barnaby Thompson UK. 2007. 101 minsA modern make-over may have worked wonders for James Bond but it fails to rejuvenate another great British institution in the lacklustre return of Ronald Searle's unruly schoolgirls. The St Trinian's films were a commercially viable franchise for twenty-five years until ...
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Reviews
The Golden Compass
Dir: Chris Weitz US/UK 118minsA more well-tooled and expertly crafted beginning to a winter franchise is hard to imagine, yet it's this very gleaming perfection that may leave The Golden Compass open to accusations of soullessness and artifice. The perceived Americanisation of the greatest British children's publishing phenomenon since Harry ...
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Reviews
Unrelated
Dir: Joanna Hogg. UK, 2007, 100minsBritish film-makers have never been comfortable making thoughtful, provocative arthouse movies about the tribulations of bourgeois families. It is a style of film-making in which the French have long excelled but that UK directors generally steer clear of in case of being thought affected or ...
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Reviews
Lions For Lambs
Dir: Robert Redford. US. 2007. 88 mins.A talky, stagebound curio of a movie, Lions For Lambs is far from the high-octane Hollywood mega-movie its star pedigree would suggest. On the contrary, its star power - Robert Redford, who also directed, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise - may help to draw ...
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Reviews
Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead
Dir: Stuart Urban. UK 2007. 83 minsStuart Urban's documentary is the latest in an increasingly lengthy list of films made by children about their fathers (Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are, Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect and Doug Block's 51 Birch Street are three other recent examples.) Tovarisch, however, is ...
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Reviews
Razzle Dazzle: A Journey Into Dance
Dir: Darren Ashton. Australia 95 minsFollowing two children's dance troupes as they compete for top prize in a prestigious national tournament, Razzle Dazzle: A Journey Into Dance is an intermittently amusing backstage comedy that skewers the rampaging egos and vaulting ambition of its ragbag of aspiring show-biz types. Filmed in ...
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Reviews
Run, Fat Boy, Run
Dir: David Schwimmer UK . 2007. 101minsSimon Pegg is fast becoming Britain 's king of comedy. He seems to have found the secret of reaching levels of box-office success denied to fellow British television graduates like Mitchell and Webb (Magicians (2007)) and Ant and Dec (Alien Autopsy (2006)). Run, Fat ...
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Reviews
Nightwatching
Dir: Peter Greenaway, Netherlands-Canada-Poland-UK. 140mins.Peter Greenaway takes The Night Watch - arguably Rembrandt's most famous painting, and certainly his most earnestly discussed and interpreted work - as the basis for a rambling, theatrical, frequently didactic study of a turning point in the Dutch painter's life. By turns both murder mystery, ...
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Reviews
Brick Lane
Dir: Sarah Gavron UK. 2007. 101 minsMonica Ali's 2003 novel Brick Lane was feted for its ability to blend the personal and the political as it recounted the experiences of a young Bangladeshi woman's journey of self-discovery. It was illuminating about the hidden lives of Britain's Bangladeshi community and the ...
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Reviews
Far North
Dir: Asif Kapadia France/UK. 89 mins.With this dark tale of a supernaturally-tinged love triangle dark set in the frozen wastes of the Arctic Circle, Asif Kapadia returns to the myth-rooted dreamscape of his 2001 debut, The Warrior, after an uninspiring studio hiatus (Rogue/Focus Features' horror-flop The Return). But as a ...
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Reviews
Sugarhouse
Dir: Gary Love, UK 2007, 92mins A claustrophobic psychodrama that never quite shakes off its stage origins, Sugarhouse is performed with ferocious intensity by its three leads. First-time director Love creates a genuine sense of menace. He also effectively cranks up the tension even if the plotting ultimately seems contrived ...
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Reviews
Saxon
Dir/scr/ed: Greg Loftin. UK. 2007. 92mins.Evoking resonances of vintage Clint Eastwood fare like High Plains Drifter, Saxon stars Sean Harris as Eddie, a prodigal son who returns to the council estate of his youth. An ex-con, he has recently parted company with an eye and is desperately seeking cash to ...
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