Latest – Page 564
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Reviews
Street Kings
Dir: David Ayer. US. 2008. 107 mins.A violent thriller about police corruption in Los Angeles, Street Kings retreads territory already covered by director David Ayer in Training Day and Dark Blue, which he wrote, and Harsh Times which he wrote and directed. Everything here is predictable, from the tired plot ...
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Reviews
Nim's Island (2007)
Dirs: Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett. US. 2008. 96 mins.A smart and lively family film boasting star draws in Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler, Nim's Island is destined to have a long life on multiple platforms over many years. Young children of both genders and, importantly, their parents ...
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Reviews
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Dir: Nicholas Stoller. US. 2008. 112 mins.The Judd Apatow comedy machine reaches new heights with this instant classic from director Nicholas Stoller, star/writer Jason Segel and producer Apatow. Consistently funny, remarkably tender and absolutely contemporary in its depiction of young twentysomethings, their social mores and concerns, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is ...
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Reviews
Superhero Movie
Dir: Craig Mazin. US. 2008. 86 mins.For the most part a dispiriting, tedious send-up of superhero story cliches, Superhero Movie starts out with a full head of steam but quickly flags, struggling to fill out both its costume and its running time. Like the worst of its downmarket, quick-buck spoof ...
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Reviews
Leatherheads
Dir: George Clooney. US. 2008. 113 mins.Part screwball romance, part sports comedy, George Clooney's third film behind the camera, the period piece Leatherheads, goes back to the early days of American professional football. Loose-limbed, loquacious and exceedingly affable, the movie finally comes unglued in the final third, when forced to ...
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Reviews
Grandmother's Flower
Dir: Mun Jeong-hyun. South Korea. 2007. 90mins.The political is transformed into the intensely personal in South Korean documentary Grandmother's Flower, a powerful first-person family essay by Mun Jeong-hyun. Mun's technique is sometimes shoddy and his aesthetic decisions questionable, but the content proves so absorbing and miraculous that it overrides the ...
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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 ...