Latest – Page 575
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Reviews
The Passage
Dir: Mark Heller 2007 USA . 95 mins.A likable cast and the exotic backdrop of Morocco provides first-time feature director Mark Heller with the tools to make a tense thriller about Western tourists in danger but he fails to build much-needed suspense. While pretty to watch, The Passage never scares ...
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Reviews
Young People Fucking
Dir: Martin Gero. Canada, 2007. 91 MinsYoung People Fucking is quite clearly a title that's out to grab one's attention. Neither documentary nor hardcore, it's an ingeniously constructed pastiche of sexual encounters presented affectionately and with humour. Reminiscent of American independent movies of the 1980s, the film should really be ...
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Reviews
Gone with the Woman (Tatt av Kvinnen)
Dir. Peter Naess. Sweden/Norway 2007. 92 min.Picked by Norway to carry its flag at the Oscars this year, Peter Naess' new screwball romance takes off a vivacious, though rather misogynistic tone, but soon settles down to a pedestrian pace which it follows the rest of the way. Naess, whose irreverent ...
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Reviews
In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia)
Dir. Jose Luis Guerin. Spain / France, 2007. 90 min.In the City of Sylvia is likely to be defined by some as 'a work of genius' and by others as like 'watching paint dry'. An audience in search of a plot with a beginning middle and end should look elsewhere. ...
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Reviews
The Obscure (Xiaoshuo)
Dir. Lu Yue. China 2006. 84 min.Potentiallya powerful soporific for any audience not fluent in Mandarin, Lu Yue's combination of documentary and improvised live action is almost self-defeating in its insistence to stick, for the first hour, to a purely theoretical seminar. As it is, Lu's picture could interest scholars ...
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Reviews
Foul Gesture (Tnuah Meguna)
Dir: Tzahi Grad. Israel 2006. 96 mins.A satirical social comedy turns into a terrific, slow-burn revenge drama in Israeli actor Tzahi Grad's second directorial outing. Though the rough, low-budget production values will put off mainstream distributors, arthouse and genre specialists should take a look at this title, whose strong script ...
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Reviews
Glass
Dir: Scott Hicks. Australia . 2007. 122mins.The critical relationship of subject to filmmaker is the tipping point for most documentary portraits. It is the primary distinction between a probing and objective analysis and hagiography. In Scott Hicks' Glass, the composer Philip Glass has allowed the director unmediated exposure to his ...
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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
Normal
Dir. Carl Bessai. Canada . 2007. 100 min.With Normal , Canadian filmmaker Carl Bessai delivers his most accomplished film yet. An intense psychological portrait of lives shattered by a sudden death, it does everything well. Although it explores familiar terrain - comparisons with the daisy-chain of Paul Haggis' Crash are ...
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Reviews
Good Luck Chuck
Dir: Mark Helfrich. US. 2007. 99 mins.A high-energy servicing of the randy, relationship-oriented sex comedy sub-genre, Good Luck Chuck feels work-shopped for big business, but beset by awkward tonal swings that seem less a function of story, and much more nakedly designed to try to lure in different demographics. The ...
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Reviews
Rails & Ties
Dir. Alison Eastwood. US, 2007. 96 mins.The feature-film directorial debut of Clint Eastwood's 35-year-old actress daughter, Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties is an always serviceable, professionally accomplished film. Unfortunately, its ambitions are hampered by a central situation that is redolent of too many made-for-TV films, as well as by implausible ...
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Reviews
Man From Plains
Dir. Jonathan Demme. US 2007. 125 mins.Man from Plains follows the former US president Jimmy Carter from his sprawling family peanut farm in southern Georgia to a national book tour on which the earnest man who brokered the Camp David Accords defends his controversial view that Israel imposes rules akin ...
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Reviews
Shake Hands with the Devil
Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Canada 2007, 113 Mins.The tragic recent history that informed Hotel Rwanda is viewed from another angle in Shake Hands with the Devil. Viewed from the perspective of General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded United Nations forces during the 1993 crisis, it paints a picture of broader dimension that ...
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Reviews
Erik Nietzsche - The Early Years (Erik Nietzsche - De Unge Ar)
Dir.Jacob Thuesen. Denmark . 2007. 91 min.Lars von Trier's revenge on the Danish film industry is a very funny inside joke. A not-so-fond evisceration of film school, filmmakers, actors (more precisely oversexed Danish actresses), technicians, guilds and unions, the picaresque film follows its eponymous hero through a circus of cinema-related ...
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Reviews
Mad Detective
Dir. Johnny To, Wai Ka Fai. Hong Kong 2007. 89 min.The prolific Johnny To and his occasional collaborator Wai Ka Fai here put a new twist on the standard police yarn. No longer simply good cop versus bad cop, they add a third angle, the mad cop, who uses neither ...
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Reviews
Shadows
Dir/Scr: Milcho Manchevski. Macedonia 2007. 120mins.A ghost story that draws on the irrational to explore the historical and cultural redress of displaced Macedonians, Milcho Manchevski's third feature Shadows is ambitious and capably mounted. However it is too fastidious for its own good, and is damaged by dramatically contradictory parts that ...
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Reviews
Love Comes Lately
Dir. Jan Schutte. Germany/Austria/US 2007. 86 min.Jan Schutte's adaptation of three short-stories by the Yiddish writer and Nobel-prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer will attract mostly mature audiences who will identify with its central character, octogenarian writer Max Kohn. Like most adaptations of works by great authors, the picture faces the ...
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Reviews
Reclaim Your Brain (Free Rainer-Dein Fernseher Lugt)
Dir. Hans Weingartner. Germany . 2007. 132 minsAnyone who has ever railed against the pernicious poison of reality television should derive a scattering of wry chuckles from Reclaim Your Brain, a Capra-esque call to arms from writer/director Hans Weingartner. Taking aim at some obvious targets, it is slow to warm ...