Latest – Page 579
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Reviews
Disengagement
Dir. Amos Gitai. France / Israel / Germany / Italy , 2007. 115 mins.Amos Gitai's systematic chronicle of modern Israeli history reaches one of its more sensitive and inevitable points in this dramatised version of the recent crisis generated by the unilateral decision, taken by the Sharon government, to dismantle ...
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Reviews
The Secret Of The Grain (La Graine Et Le Mulet)
Dir/Scr: Abdellatif Kechiche , France , 2007, 153mins.A cine-verite tour-de-force, Abdellatif Kechiche's follow-up to the award- winning L'Esquive loads an apparently slight story set against the background of France 's first-and-second generation Maghrebi immigrant communities with surprising dramatic weight. There's even less story and even more of the director's trademark ...
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Reviews
Margot At The Wedding
Director/Scr: Noah Baumbach US . 2007. 91minsBaumbach's ambitious follow-up to the much admired The Squid And The Whale (2005) has echoes of Rohmer and vintage Woody Allen in its depiction of the affairs of the heart but lacks the laser-like precision, economy and easy approachability of his earlier hit. A ...
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Reviews
The Brave One
Dir: Neil Jordan. US. 2007. 122 mins.Jodie Foster delivers a performance far superior to her material in Neil Jordan's self-consciously provocative and largely absurd vigilante drama - which has its world premiere as a Special Presentation in Toronto. Attempting to hit the same hot buttons as other audacious studio movies ...
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Reviews
The Brothers Solomon
Dir: Bob Odenkirk. US. 2007. 94mins.Coming only three months after another mainstream R-rated comedy revolving around an impending birth, The Brothers Solomon will likely enjoy neither the critical accolades nor the bountiful box-office that greeted the arrival of this summer's Knocked Up. Though not without its screwball charm and occasionally ...
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Reviews
Gone Baby Gone
Dir: Ben Affleck. US. 2007. 114mins.In Gone Baby Gone, an earnest but inexperienced young man plunges headfirst into deep waters, only to discover how much he still has to learn. That description could apply to the film's main character, a headstrong private detective hunting for a missing child, but it ...
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Reviews
The Hunting Party
Dir: Richard Shepard USA 2007. 100mins A textbook study in the dangers of trying to have one's cake and eat it, The Hunting Party mixes earnest sentimentality and black comedy in an unlikely yarn about the search for a Bosnian Serb war criminal by a maverick TV news crew. On ...
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Reviews
The Sun Also Rises (Taiyang zhaochang shengqi)
Dir. Jiang Wen. China , 2007. 116 min . Five years in preparation and three years in the making, Jiang Wen's explosively energetic third feature film is a feast for the eyes and a delight for the ears. But at the same time this may prove a perplexing, often infuriating ...
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Reviews
Help Me Eros (2007)
Dir. Lee Kang Sheng. Taiwan , 2007. 103minsBest known as Tsai Ming Liang's regular lead actor, Lee Kang Sheng's second feature film will cater mainly for the regular followers of Tsai's special brand of cinema - slow, minimalist, obsessive and heavily reliant on such compulsive fixations as sex and food, ...
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Reviews
The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Les Amours D'Astree et de Celadon)
Dir: Eric Rohmer France /Spain/Italy 2007. 109minsThere are two Eric Rohmers. The more popular is the detached comic observer of modern emotional dilemmas, the maker of the Moral Comedies and Four Seasons series. The other is a sometimes forbidding experimental contriver of historical and literary dramas, such as Perceval le ...
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Reviews
Far North
Dir: Asif Kapadia France/UK. 89 mins.With this dark tale of a supernaturally-tinged love triangle dark set in the frozen wastes of the Arctic Circle, Asif Kapadia returns to the myth-rooted dreamscape of his 2001 debut, The Warrior, after an uninspiring studio hiatus (Rogue/Focus Features' horror-flop The Return). But as a ...
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Reviews
It's A Free World
Ken Loach UK/Germany/Italy/Spain/Poland,/ 2007, 96 minutesKen Loach is back in familiar groove in It's A Free World. This is a small-scale but often affecting and very well observed film in the vein of The Navigators, Riff-Raff and Raining Stones. It may not be vintage Loach (there are moments of improbability ...
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Reviews
Halloween
Dir: Rob Zombie US 2007 110mins Rob Zombie's're-imagining' of the original Halloween replaces the atmospheric suspense of John Carpenter's 1978 slasher classic with plodding gonzo horror that offers plenty of blood but not much of the rocker-turned-filmmaker's usual gory flair. Still, the combination of Zombie with one of the horror ...
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Reviews
Into The Wild
Dir: Sean Penn. US. 2007. 148mins.Sean Penn's fourth feature as a director is as exhilarating as it is unwieldy, a sprawling hymn to nature, humanity and personal freedom which firmly establishes the much-feted actor as a film-maker of vision. Shining an affectionate light on the drifters and counter-culturalists living in ...
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Reviews
The Darjeeling Limited
Dir: Wes Anderson USA 2007. 91 mins.Wes Anderson treads water, or maybe lime tea, with The Darjeeling Limited, the latest quirky philosophical comedy from the US maverick. This tale of three brothers who meet up on an Indian train to bond and find themselves has a kooky, laid back charm ...
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Reviews
Fallen Heroes (Nessuna qualità agli eroi)
Dir: Paolo Franchi It/Switz. 2007. 100 mins.Paolo Franchi is the true heir to Antonioni among the current crop of young Italian directors: he's fascinated by passive, blocked, brooding characters, by emotions that can hardly be translated into images, let alone words. And like the films of the late lamented Ferrarese ...
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Reviews
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Dir: Andrew Dominik. USA 2007. 159 mins.Stirring, nuanced and elegaic, Andrew Dominik's retelling of Jesse James's legend is equal parts a mentor-acolyte love story, a melancholy neo-Western and a tragedy of betrayal with Biblical echoes. Based on the historical novel by Ron Hansen, the film touches on the way history ...
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Reviews
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Dir: Andrew Dominik. USA 2007. 159 mins.Stirring, nuanced and elegaic, Andrew Dominik's retelling of Jesse James's legend is equal parts a mentor-acolyte love story, a melancholy neo-Western and a tragedy of betrayal with Biblical echoes. Based on the historical novel by Ron Hansen, the film touches on the way history ...
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Reviews
In The Valley Of Elah
Dir: Paul Haggis. 2007. 120 mins.The really fascinating aspect of aul Haggis's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Crash is the way it uses Hollywood conventions as a Trojan horse to deliver a radical, anti-war message to a mainstream audience.Like Brian de Palma's passionate cinematic 'j'accuse', Redacted, which also screened in ...