Latest – Page 587
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Reviews
West 32nd
Dir: Michael Kang. US. 2007. 83mins. Michael Kang's second feature West 32nd is an ambitious thriller set in the Korean underworld of Manhattan. While rich in atmosphere and a set-up which promises to peel the layers off a sinister world of crime, it ultimately promises more intrigue and complexity than ...
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Reviews
Rise: Blood Hunter
Dir: Sebastian Gutierrez. US. 2007. 94mins.A genre thriller without much of a bite, Rise: Blood Hunter is nevertheless a well-mounted affair with a sense of humour and a solid starring turn by Lucy Liu as a woman who finds herself among the living dead. Premiered at Tribeca recently and opening ...
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Reviews
Shrek The Third
Dir: Chris Miller. US. 2007. 92mins. The 'greatest fairy tale never told' (as the original tag line put it) is missing a bit of its magic in this, the DreamWorks Animation CG fable about the big green ogre and his oddly familiar friends. With a new director and writers but ...
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Reviews
28 Weeks Later
Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. UK-US-Sp. 2007. 100mins. 28 Weeks Later is superior genre fare, directed and performed with such gusto that you scarcely notice its creaks. Atmospheric and creepy production design, excellent use of London locations and a succession of bloodcurdling chase sequences keep the tempo high, even as the ...
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Reviews
The Matrimony (Xin Zhong You Gui)
Dir: Teng Huatao. Chi. 2007. 90mins.Produced by the brothers Wang - China's answer to the Weinsteins - and released in Mainland China on Valentine's Day, The Matrimony was just pipped to the post by Li Shaohong's The Door (which hit cinemas on 18 January) for the title of 'China's first ...
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Reviews
You Kill Me
Dir: John Dahl. US. 2007. 90mins. A return to form of sorts for John Dahl after his epic World War Two flop The Great Raid, You Kill Me is a short, sharp, mordant little mob comedy about a Buffalo hitman on hiaitus from killing in San Francisco and trying to ...
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Reviews
Charlie Bartlett
Dir: Jon Poll. US. 2007. 97mins.Jon Poll, an established editor with credits including the Austin Powers and Meet The Parents films, makes a commendable directorial debut with Charlie Bartlett, a high-school comedy which sits in the same class of wry, deadpan movies as Rushmore, Election and Saved!. Sunnier and more ...
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Reviews
We Are Together (Thina Simunye)
Dir. Paul Taylor. UK. 2006. 86minsThe young singers in We Are Together (Thina Simunye) are some of the estimated 1.2m orphans in South Africa today, most of whom lost their parents to AIDS-related illnesses. The motivational documentary by Paul Taylor observed them singing and struggling over three years. The themes ...
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Reviews
Where God Left His Shoes
Dir: Salvatore Stabile. US. 2007. 99mins.There's no question that Where God Left His Shoes contains its fair share of cliches; it also skirts dangerously close to sentimentality. But writer/producer/director Salvatore Stabile, who made his debut feature Gravesend when he was just 19, keeps his second film on track and ultimately ...
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Reviews
Lovesickness (Maldeamores)
Dir: Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz. Puerto Rico. 2007. 90mins.A bright new talent emerges from Puerto Rico in writer/director Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz, whose debut feature Maldeamores (aka Lovesickness) is a warm-hearted and witty tryptych of stories about the dysfunctions and masochism of love. The film had a strong reception at its Tribeca ...
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Reviews
The Workshop
Dir: Jamie Morgan. UK. 2007. 93mins.One of the most talked about films at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, UK documentary The Workshop from first-time film-maker Jamie Morgan is a personal hand-held record of a ten-day workshop Morgan took with 'guru' Paul Lowe in northern California. While hardly the most technically ...
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Reviews
Watching The Detectives
Dir: Paul Soter. US. 2007. 91mins. Watching The Detectives, Paul Soter's feature debut, is intended to be a cinephile's movie, a geek cinephile's movie, where the hapless proprietor of video store and slacker haven is seduced by a femme fatale who walks in off the street. The tale than unfolds ...
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Reviews
The Air I Breathe
Dir: Jieho Lee. US. 2007. 97mins.In his debut feature, The Air I Breathe, Jieho Lee turns a Chinese proverb into a story that explores the interlocking fates of four characters, all of whom all are trapped in the grip, literally, of a violent gangster boss called Fingers. The gangster drama ...
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Reviews
My Father, My Lord (Hofshat Kaits)
Dir. David Volach. Is. 2006. 72mins. Even the top drama award at Tribeca can't make My Father, My Lord, David Volach's debut feature, into a crowd pleaser - but then again, it was never meant to. An intimate chamber piece, requiring its audience to interpret the apparently banal images into ...
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Reviews
The Grand
Dir: Zak Penn. US. 2006. 95minsIf you hesitated to believe that gambling casinos were a magnet for misfits, The Grand, an improvised ensemble comedy set at a high-stakes poker tournament in Las Vegas, will confirm that impression. Zak Penn's new film is a high-stakes vaudeville Love Boat with more stars ...
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Reviews
Beyond Belief
Dir: Beth Murphy. US. 2007. 98mins.Beyond Belief follows two 9/11 widows outside Boston as they rebuild their families. The women move beyond grief and beyond their own experience to start a charity to help the thousands of Afghan women whose hardships from decades of war and discrimination is barely know ...
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Reviews
Suburban Girl
Dir: Marc Klein. US. 2007. 96mins. The 'chick lit' phenomenon, which has flooded bookstores around the world, is clearly triggering a celluloid trend, especially after the success of The Devil Wears Prada last year and a wide release planned later this year for The Nanny Diaries. Suburban Girl, an adaptation ...
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Reviews
Live!
Dir: Bill Guttentag. US. 2007. 96mins.Bill Guttentag's hilarious satire of reality/game show media culture, Live! takes its subject to the wall with a live televised Russian Roulette competition. Presented as a The Making Of story, Live! also attacks the ghoulish opportunism of independent documentaries. Live! will show viewers of ...
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Reviews
Smiley Face
Dir: Gregg Araki. US. 2007. 87mins.Smiley Face opens as a would-be LA actress's pot-induced journey stumbles to an end, with blonde stoner Jane (Anna Faris) reflecting on the binge that, as the omniscient narrator (Roscoe Lee Browne) puts it, took a young woman 'from point A to point Z.' The ...