Latest – Page 563
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Reviews
Welcome To The Sticks (Bienvenue chez les ch'tis)
Dir Dany Boon. Fr. 2008. 106mins.A last-minute English title change for Dany Boon's soaraway French box office success (it was to be called Welcome To The Land Of The Ch'tis) should help this broad-based, amiable comedy attract audiences looking to find out what le tout France is talking about.Butthat is ...
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Reviews
Correction (Diorthosi)
Dir/prod:Thanos Anastopoulos. Greece , 2007. 83 mins.Hailed as the best Greek film of last year, Thanos Anastopoulos' second feature is a purposely-mystifying affair which leads its audience in a hide 'n seek game from the beginning and refuses to reveal itself until the final frame (a gambit which also makes ...
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Reviews
Drillbit Taylor
Dir. Steven Brill. US. 2008. 102 mins.The Judd Apatow laugh factory turns out one of its younger-skewing - and less funny - products in Drillbit Taylor, a revenge-of-the-nerds comedy that teams Owen Wilson's hapless title character with a trio of bullied high school outcasts. In some ways resembling a junior ...
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Reviews
Sleepwalking
Dir. William Maher, 2008, US, 101 minutes, colour.In Sleepwalking, an 11-year-old girl is abandoned by her mother and left with her undependable uncle, who shows the child just how dysfunctional their family can be. William Maher (not the talk show host) has made a dark film, shot in dark hues, ...
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Reviews
14 Kilometres (14 Kilometros)
Dir: Gerardo Olivares. Spain , Bolivia , 2007. 93 mins.14 Kilometres, which documents the woeful journey of three immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa who leave home in search of an imaginary Europe 'where no one dies of hunger', is a well-intentioned effort but seems far more comfortable dealing with the spectacular ...
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Reviews
Doomsday
Dir: Neil Marshall. US. 2008. 109 minsWritten and directed by Neil Marshall, Doomsday is reformulated post-apocalyptic genre pap, plain and simple. It's also devoid of narrative ambition, atrociously staged, full of baffling incongruities, and not much fun to boot.Obviously pitched at fans of the popular Resident Evil series and 28 ...
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Reviews
Never Back Down
Dir: Jeff Wadlow. US. 2008. 113 mins.Fight Club meets The Karate Kid in Never Back Down, a generic, violent underdog story that pays a lot of lip service to non-violence when its characters aren't busy kicking and punching the tar out of each other. Though the film tries to capitalise ...
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Reviews
Stop-Loss
Dir: Kimberly Peirce. US. 2008. 113 mins.Nine years after Boys Don't Cry, Kimberly Peirce finally returns with a second film, but Stop-Loss, a portrait of American men returning from Iraq and the stop-loss policy that keeps sending them back there, is as earnest and heavy-handed as her first film was ...
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Reviews
Os Desafinados (Slightly Out Of Tune)
Dir: Walter Lima Jr. Brazil, 2008. 138 mins.A tribute to the golden age of bossa nova, Os Desafinados tells the story of four young musicians from Rio trying to make it big in New York in the sixties, just as Joao Gilberto and Tom Jobim were influencing popular music there ...
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Reviews
Don't Look Down (No Mires Para Abajo)
Dir: Eliseo Subiela. Argentina, 2008. 85 mins.Once the darling of art cinema circles and festival programmers, veteran Argentine filmmaker Eliseo Subiela (Last Images Of The Shipwreck, The Dark Side of the Heart) could be looking at a comeback with this erotic romp, which doesn't take itself as seriously as some ...
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Reviews
21
Dir: Robert Luketic. US. 2008. 122 mins.21 is a highly-fictionalised super-slick movie version of the non-fiction bestseller Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich which has just the right doses of MTV flash, pretty young stars and beat-the-system wish fulfillment to make it work at the box office as a ...
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Reviews
The Cottage (2007)
Dir: Paul Andrew Williams. UK . 2008. 92 mins.London To Brighton (2006) was one of the most admired British debut features in recent years, with writer/director Paul Andrew Williams being widely hailed as the next great hope of British filmmaking. How fortunate that The Cottage wasn't his first feature. A ...
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Reviews
The Oxford Murders
Dir. Alex de la Iglesia, Spain/UK/France, 2008, 110 mins.Serving up archaic symbols, sinister cloaked figures, philosophical asides and murder most foul, Alex de la Iglesia's The Oxford Murders promises a heady blend of maths and murder. But despite able direction, an intense, unsettling score and some competent acting, this screen ...
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Reviews
Horton Hears A Who!
Dirs. Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino. US. 2008. 88minsBefore he ever heard a Who, Dr Seuss's idiosyncratic elephant Horton hatched an egg. While pundits have been predicting that this all-animated Blue Sky Studios adaptation would be it, they're wrong.Everyone loves the Dr Seuss books, but they've been a creativedisasters cinematically - ...
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Reviews
10,000 BC
Directed by Roland Emmerich. US. 2007. 108 mins. Closer in spirit to the kitschy fantasy of One Million Years BC than the grungy realism of Quest For Fire, Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC is a lumbering and mostly unconvincing prehistoric adventure partially redeemed by some eye-catching effects and cinematography. Interest from ...
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Reviews
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
Dir. Bharat Nalluri, UK, 2008, 92 minutes.Set in lavishly-decadent pre-war London, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is a grown-up Cinderella story about a middle-aged jobless governess who schemes to be social secretary to an American Lolita, who, in turn, schemes to be a singer. Bharat Nalluri's unimaginative, awkwardly-scripted farcereminds ...
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Reviews
Semi-Pro
Dir: Kent Alterman. US. 2008. 91 mins.Characteristically anarchic, loosely structured and unabashedly blue, Will Ferrell's new comedy Semi-Pro ably skewers both second-tier professional basketball and the regrettable fashion of the early 1970s, ranking in the top half of the comedian's roster of sports parodies (a list which includes Kicking and ...