Latest – Page 569
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Reviews
The Escapist
Dir: Rupert Wyatt. UK/Ireland. 2008. 105mins.In his debut feature The Escapist director Rupert Wyatt animates the virtues of the B-movie thriller - direct expression, taut construction and a stripped down psychology-with a more conceptually unorthodox narrative design that collapses time and space.In the script he wrote with Daniel Hardy, Wyatt ...
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Reviews
Hamlet 2
Dir: Andrew Fleming. US. 2008. 92mins.Britain's Steve Coogan finally finds a US vehicle which effectively showcases his comedic talents in Hamlet 2, a more-hit-than-miss gagfest in which he plays a talentless high school drama teacher called Dana Marszh. Often wildly funny, this puerile romp was a welcome oasis of frivolity ...
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Reviews
Waltz In Starlight (Hoshikageno Waltz)
Dir: Shingo Wakagi. Japan. 2007. 97mins.Japanese photographer turned director Shingo Wakagi makes a tender homage to his grandfather in an affecting DV miniature that mixes fictionalized reminiscence with documentary touches. Borderline-experimental, the very personal Waltz In Starlight is essentially gentle portraiture with just a hint of narrative content, the film's ...
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Reviews
My Marlon And Brando (Gitmek)
Dir: Hüseyin Karabey. Turkey/Netherlands/UK. 2008. 92minsA Turkish woman embarks on a romantic journey as war breaks out in Iraq , in the tough, engaging road movie My Marlon And Brando. Billed as being 'based on a true story', the film derives its distinctive immediacy from the fact that its lead ...
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Reviews
The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
Dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber. US. 2008. 95minsPittsburgh in 1983 is the setting of this coming of age based on Michael Chabon's novel about a young man, entangled in affairs, breaks free from the rule of his mafia-boss father in the first summer of his adult life. A genre that's as ...
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Reviews
Henry Poole Is Here
Dir: Mark Pellington. US. 2008. 100minsThe skeptical notion that ‘believing is seeing’ is put to rest in Henry Poole Is Here, a new twist on magic realism directed by Mark Pellington. Backyard miracles transform the life of a man who retreats from the world into a dull California suburb after ...
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Reviews
Sugar
Dir/scr: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. US. 2008. 117minsIn a word, Sugar is extraordinary. The second feature of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden deepens the promise and talent they exhibited on their debut Half Nelson. A singular examination of sports, class and the American social fabric refracted through the perspective ...
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Reviews
Rambo
Dir: Sylvester Stallone. US. 2008. 91mins.Cynically using the decades-long Burmese civil war as a backdrop for grisly and unremitting violence, muscle-headed action flick Rambo comes off as a sad and empty attempt to be politically relevant. Coming almost two decades after the last series entry, and on the heels of ...
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Reviews
Lamb Of God (Cordero de Dios)
Dir: Lucia Cedron. Argentina/France/Chile. 2008. 91minsFirst-time feature director Lucia Cedron makes an assured debut with Lamb Of God, a skillfully told and affecting tale which straddles the line between political thriller and family melodrama. The elaborate flashback structure - the film is set in Argentina in 1978, when the country ...
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Reviews
Death In Love
Dir: Boaz Yakin. 2008. US. 100min Boaz Yakin's dark drama is about the legacy of pain. We enter it through a smooth-talking scammer in Manhattan whose mother survived the Nazi camps thanks to a love affair with a doctor who experimented on prisoners. Death In Love shows that, as parents ...
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Reviews
Choke
Dir: Clark Gregg. US. 2008. 89minsActor Clark Gregg's ambitious adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's 2001 cult novel Choke is stylistically rambunctious and tonally inconsistent. If the center never quite holds and it never quite reaches complete success artistically, the movie certainly commands interest through the superb lead performance of Sam Rockwell ...
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Reviews
Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden'
Dir: Morgan Spurlock. US. 2008. 93minsIn Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden', Morgan Spurlock super-sizes the scope of the one-man quest for truth and goes global, searching around the Middle East for the Al Qaeda leader with a $25 million price on his head. After sitting down with ...
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Reviews
Incendiary (2007)
Dir: Sharon Maguire. UK. 2008. 96mins.This relatively large-scale UK production about the human cost of terrorism is an overly earnest, narratively muddled affair notable chiefly for a gutsy performance by Michelle Williams. Although it starts promisingly, Sharon Maguire's first film since Bridget Jones's Diary in 2001 quickly veers into the ...
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Reviews
Smart People
Dir: Noam Murro. US. 2007. 93min.Noam Murro's debut feature Smart People is somewhat deceptive work in which the primary story of a tentative love affair between a difficult and intellectually arrogant university professor and his former student is constantly usurped by the more interesting dynamics of the man's brilliantly acid ...
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Reviews
Away From Her
Dir: Sarah Polley. Canada. 110 minsSarah Polley's Away From Her is a lovingly wrought and heartfelt exploration of the end of a complicated relationship. The young Canadian actress has a reputation as a nuanced stalwart of the international indie film scene. That reputation is set for a dramatic transformation. Polley's ...
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Reviews
Sunshine Cleaning
Dir: Christine Jeffs. US. 2008. 102minsChristine Jeffs' third feature has a great premise and knockout cast but proves disappointingly soft-centred. Long touted as a follow-up of sorts to Little Miss Sunshine - it shares the same financiers, producers, almost the same title and Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin in virtually the ...
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Reviews
Be Kind Rewind
Michel Gondry. US.2007. 101minsJean-Luc Godard's famous observation that the best film criticism is to remake the same film is given a deliciously inventive and stylistically daring treatment in virtuoso French director Michel Gondry's fourth feature Be Kind Rewind. It's a jaunty, outrageous and visually inventive fantasia that is wondrous, beguiling ...