Latest – Page 572

  • Reviews

    Those Three (An Seh)

    2 January 2008

    Dir/Scr: Naghi Nemati. Iran, 2007. 77mins.Naghi Nemati's assured, poetic debut proves that the Iranian talent factory is still up and running. Playing in Dubai after its Locarno festival bow and Toronto slot, this austerely-shot existential odyssey about three soldiers lost in a snowy wasteland seems tailor-made to illustrate Fellini's claim ...

  • Reviews

    Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem

    27 December 2007

    Gory but uninspired sci-fi action mixes with dull human drama in Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, a sloppy follow-up to the summer 2004 hit that first pitted Fox's two iconic space monsters against each other on the big screen. While fans of the contemporary Alien vs Predator comic books and videogames ...

  • Reviews

    Recycle (Ee'adat Khalk)

    21 December 2007

    Dir/Scr: Mahmoud al-Massad. Jordan/Netherlands/USA/Germany 2007. 80mins.Recycle, a portrait of a disillusioned former mujahideen fighter who makes a living collecting scrap cardboard in Zarqa, his Jordanian hometown, is one of those subtle, taciturn, underplayed documentaries that forces its audience to work at teasing out meanings. It's Errol Morris, in other words, ...

  • Reviews

    Loins of Punjab Presents

    21 December 2007

    Dir: Manish Acharya India/USA 2007. 88mins.A mostly hilarious screwball comedy set around a New York talent contest for expat Indians - or 'desis' - Loins of Punjab Presents has an infectious energy that makes up for the occasional lapse into self-indulgent cliche. With its wacky ensemble cast and its affectionately ...

  • Reviews

    National Treasure: Book Of Secrets

    21 December 2007

    Dir: Jon Turteltaub. US. 2007. 124mins.The first National Treasure reaped sizable international box-office fortunes with a loopy gee-whiz amalgam of Indiana Jones derring-do and Mission: Impossible-style set pieces. Three years later, the inevitable sequel, dubbed Book Of Secrets, is as derivative of its sources as it is of the first ...

  • Reviews

    St Trinian's

    21 December 2007

    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 ...

  • Reviews

    The Great Debaters

    18 December 2007

    Dir: Denzel Washington. US. 2007. 125 minutes.A strong and similarly emotionally resonant follow-up to his 2002 debut behind the camera, Antwone Fisher, Denzel Washington's second directorial effort is a familiarly structured but extremely effective drama. Lacking pretense and guile, The Great Debaters tells the true story of an African-American college ...

  • Reviews

    Captain Abu Raed

    17 December 2007

    Dir/Scr: Amin Matalqa. Jordan/USA 2007. 109mins.Only a handful of full-length films have come out of Jordan in the fifty years since the country's first feature, Struggle in Jarash. This makes Captain Abu Raed's commercial poise and polish all the more remarkable: a moving dramatic fable about an elderly airport janitor's ...

  • Reviews

    Whatever Lola Wants

    17 December 2007

    Dir: Nabil Ayouch, France/Canada. 2007. 110 mins.French-produced, set between New York and Cairo, scored by an Indian-born French composer and directed by a Moroccan, Whatever Lola Wants practices the same enlightened multiculturalism that it so passionately preaches. But although Nabil Ayouch's mid-budget third feature has its heart in the right ...

  • Reviews

    P.S. I Love You

    14 December 2007

    Dir: Richard LaGravenese. US. 2007. 126minsThe lightweight Ghost-meets-Bridget Jones dramedy of Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern's PS, I Love You turns into forced romantic comedy in this miscast and largely Americanized screen version starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. Interest in the film's theatrical release will come mostly from avid chick ...

  • Reviews

    The Water Horse: Legend Of The Deep

    14 December 2007

    Dir: Jay Russell. US. 2007. 113mins.Part gentle coming-of-age story, part whimsical animal flick, The Water Horse: The Legend Of The Deep tells the story of a young Scottish boy who serves as both friend and parent to a mysterious newborn creature that he eventually has to return to nearby Loch ...

  • Reviews

    Alvin And The Chipmunks

    13 December 2007

    Dir: Tim Hill. US. 2007. 91minsFor nearly 50 years, in various incarnations on the small screen and in other forms of media, lively chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore have been delighting young audiences around the world, wreaking havoc and crooning in distinctively high-pitched, three-part harmonies which have become a pop ...

  • Reviews

    Garage

    12 December 2007

    Dir: Leonard Abrahamson. Ireland-UK. 85minsThe remarkably assured second film from Lenny Abrahamson, Garage offers a portrait of village life in rural Ireland far removed from welcoming tourist-board cliches. Boasting a superb central performance by Pat Shortt, the film revolves around garage attendant Josie, a slow-witted, almost childlike individual whose marginal ...

  • Reviews

    Caramel

    12 December 2007

    Dir: Nadine Labaki. Lebanon-France. 2007. 96mins. Nadine Labaki's debut feature is an assured and wonderfully engaging romantic comedy. At times, its storytelling is soft-centred and self-indulgent, but there is enough barbed humour and ironic observation here to counterbalance the more syrupy moments. Caramel's status as festival crowd pleaser was quickly ...

  • Reviews

    The Bucket List

    12 December 2007

    Dir: Rob Reiner. US. 2007. 93 mins.It's never less than entertaining to watch Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman spar with each other even if the vehicle they have chosen to do it in is a soft-centred Hollywood life lesson about old fellas battling cancer. As directed by Rob Reiner, whose ...

  • Under The Bombs (Sous Les Bombes)
    Reviews

    Under The Bombs (Sous Les Bombes)

    11 December 2007

    Dir: Philippe Aractingi. France-Lebanon-UK. 2007. 98mins.

  • Reviews

    Kill Them All (Matar a Todos)

    10 December 2007

    Dir: Esteban Schroeder. Uruguay, Argentina, Chile. 2007. 97mins. In Kill Them All, Esteban Schroeder plumbs the unstable political landscape of fledgling democracies in the South America of the early '90s. His confident, dynamic investigation of the complicity of governments that succeeded the juntas in countries like his native Uruguay, Argentina, ...

  • Reviews

    I Am Legend

    8 December 2007

    Dir: Francis Lawrence US. 2007. 100mins.Will Smith makes up what is essentially the one-man cast of I Am Legend, a darkly intense sci-fi/horror drama based on the classic Richard Matheson novella and directed, with the same kind of flair he brought to 2005's Constantine, by Francis Lawrence. Genre afficionados should ...

  • Reviews

    Vasermil

    4 December 2007

    Dir: Mushon Salmona. Israel. 2007. 95minsClosely related to the socially-engaged films of Ken Loach and Shane Meadows, Mushon Salmona's debut compensates for his lack of experience with a healthy dose of anger and frustration. Set in the provincial town Beer Sheba where he grew up, Salmona situates his three interwoven ...

  • Reviews

    El Greco

    4 December 2007

    Dir. Yannis Smaragdis. Greece / Spain / Hungary, 2007. 107minsHaving picked up the Greek cinema State Award on top of the Audience Award at Thessaloniki, this is undisputedly this year's favourite Greek film, racking over 600,000 admissions and still going strong. An historical pageant adapted from a fictional biography by ...