Latest – Page 585
-
Reviews
Mr Brooks
Dir: Bruce A. Evans. US. 2007. 117mins.A lurching, zigzag tale of serial murder, killer apprenticeship, malevolent reverence and cat-and-mouse investigation, Kevin Costner's Mr Brooks puts a deliciously warped spin on what are by now many prim and proper thriller conventions. A throwback to a certain breed of wildly plot-driven thrillers ...
-
Reviews
Romulus, My Father
Dir: Richard Roxburgh. 104mins. Aus. 2007.The directorial debut from Australian actor Richard Roxburgh (Moulin Rouge, Van Helsing), Romulus, My Father boasts strong performances, elegant camerawork and striking early 1960s production design. But it's a tough working-class tale that grows ever more harrowing as it intensifies and, despite the formidable presence ...
-
Reviews
Jellyfish (Meduzot)
Dir. Etgar Keret, Shira Geffen. Is-Fr. 2007. 78mins.While it makes for a bleak portrait of dysfunctional families and wretched personal lives, Jellyfish is a surprisingly accessible and easy to watch feature that deservedly won the Critic’s Week prize at Cannes.A promising debut by a tandem whose work has successfully adorned ...
-
Reviews
You, The Living
Dir/scr: Roy Andersson. Swe-Ger-Fr-Den-Nor. 2007. 94minsOne of European cinema's most distinctive stylists, and darkest humourists, returns with another tragi-comic panorama of the human condition in You, the Living. The fourth feature from Sweden's Roy Andersson is remarkably close in tone and style to Songs From the Second Floor, which won ...
-
Reviews
Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (Bunt: Delo Litvinenko)
Dir/scr: Andrei Nekrasov. Ger. 2007. 113mins.A political hot potato dropped into the Cannes official selection at the last moment, Andrei Nekrasov's Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case is likely to spark more news stories than it answers questions.The highly polemical film covers the political context behind the lethal poisoning in London last ...
-
Reviews
Calle Santa Fe
Dir: Carmen Castillo. Chile-Fr-Bel. 164mins.Beginning as a reconstruction of the October 1977 police shooting of Chilean underground Marxist leader Miguel Enriquez, Calle Santa Fe is a long but ultimately compelling documentary both celebrates the anti-Pinochet resistance and subjects it to testing questions. These are made all the more incisive and ...
-
Reviews
We Own The Night
Dir/scr: James Gray. US. 2007. 105mins.A self-conscious evocation of the crime and punishment police thrillers that were once a speciality of Sidney Lumet, We Own The Night is an average B-movie with delusions of grandeur. Transparent plotting and dubious moral grand-standing are the main drawbacks in a film that lacks ...
-
Reviews
Secret Sunshine (Miryang)
Dir: Lee Chang-dong. S Kor. 2007. 133mins.An uncompromising experiment in how much suffering a soul can take, both on screen and in one's cinema seat, Lee Chang-dong's follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Oasis makes for an original but ultimately gruelling two-and-a-quarter hours' viewing. This contemporary, twisted parable of Job is impressive, ...
-
Reviews
The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse)
Dir: Catherine Breillat. Fr-It. 2007. 114minsSeasoned provocatrice Catherine Breillat puts a predictably louche spin on the costume drama genre in An Old Mistress, her adaptation of an 1851 novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Well known for her sexually explicit and intellectually confrontational dramas such as Romance and Anatomy Of Hell, ...
-
Reviews
Promise Me This (Promets-moi)
Dir: Emir Kusturica. Fr-Serb. 2007. 140mins'Never knowingly understated' continues to be the motto of Serbian madcap director Emir Kusturica. All the usual ingredients are present in Promise Me This, the latest knockabout episode of Emir's Balkan Follies - manic overacting, slapstick, wildly cartoonish characters and the usual menagerie of hapless ...
-
Reviews
Ocean's Thirteen
Dir: Steven Soderbergh. US. 2007. 122mins.Thirteen should produce some lucky numbers for Warner Brothers and maintain the muscular box-office momentum in the current summer of threequels. The third entry in the crime caper franchise, Ocean's Thirteen marks a return to form after the self-indulgent tomfoolery of its globe-hopping predecessor, even ...
-
Reviews
Alexandra (Vishnevskaya)
Dir: Alexander Sokurov. Russia, 2007. 92 minutes.This new effort by Russian auteur Sokurov, an anti-war minimalist 'situation' - calling it a 'tale' would imply more attention to narrative than the film warrants - set and actually shot in the ruins of Grozny, in Chechnya, is very much in the humanist-formalist ...
-
Reviews
The Mourning Forest (Mogari no Mori)
Dir: Naomi Kawase. Japan/France 2007. 98 mins.Naomi Kawase is one of those directors who usethe medium of film to work through their obssessions. In her case,these include fractured families, the aftermath of a loved one's deathor disappearance, rural Japanese traditions, the spiritual luminosityof the elderly and infirm. Luckily for audiences ...
-
Reviews
Days Of Darkness
Dir. Denys Arcand.Can-Fr. 2007. 115mins.Also called at various stages Age Of Ignorance, Denys Arcand's new movie could also be called The Decline Of The Canadian Empire or alternately The Decline Of The Canadian Male.And Michael Moore should be made to sit through it for as many times as it will ...
-
Reviews
California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit)
Dir. Cristian Nemescu. Romania, 2007. 155 min. Awarded the Un Certain Regard prize more for its intentions than the actual outcome, this unfinished picture by talented young Romanian director Nemescu, as shown in Cannes, is the rough cut of a film that might have looked entirely different once completed. ...
-
Reviews
Magicians
Dir: Andrew O'Connor. UK-US. 2007. 90mins.These are boom times for British TV comedy. There is a wealth of talent working on the small screen. The continuing paradox is that so few of the best British comedians (Sasha Baron Cohen notwithstanding) make a successful transition to cinema. Magicians, made by the ...
-
Reviews
The Pope's Toilet (El Bano del Papa)
Dir/scr: Enrique Fernandez, Cesar Charlone. Urug/Bra. 2007. 97 mins.Taking place in a poverty-stricken area between Brazil and Uruguay and shot on location with documentary-style grittiness, it is the kind of stuff that festivals concerned with social issues and the Third World should have a look at and Latin American minorities ...
-
Reviews
Mister Lonely
Dir: Harmony Korine. UK/Fr/Ire/USA. 2006. 112 mins It's a playful, romantic Harmony Kormine who emerges for inspection with Mister Lonely, his first film as a director since Julien Donkey Boy in 1999. The story of a lonely Michael Jackson impersonator who finds a fleeting tenderness with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator ...
-
