Latest – Page 617
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Reviews
Offside (Sweden, 2006)
Dir: Jafar Pahani. Iran. 2006. 88mins.Destined to be referred to as a Farsi Bend It Like Beckham, Jafar Panahi's football story Offside is his most approachable filmsince The White Balloon, which puthim on the map in 1995.Essentially a realistcomedy, this digital ensemble piece is also bitterly outspoken about thetreatment of ...
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Reviews
The Comedy Of Power (L'Ivresse Du Pouvoir)
Dir: Claude Chabrol. Fr. 2006. 110mins.A sleek, hand-tooled, extremely sophisticatedpackage, A Comedy OfPower is a very grown-up entertainment that artfully walks a line betweenmoral comedy and political thriller. A deluxe cast of French actors, headed byIsabelle Huppert in winningly brittle form, bring distinction to a complexdrama about corruption and intrigue.It ...
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Reviews
The Great Match (La Gran Final)
Dir: Gerardo Olivares. Sp-Ger.2006. 88mins.A surprisingly enjoyable ethno-romp, The Great Match is both a celebration ofthe global reach of football mania and a sly send-up of worthy anthropologicalepics like Himalaya. The threeinterleaved stories - about tribal soccer fans in remote parts of the globe whoare desperate to see the 2002 ...
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Reviews
Family Law (Derecho De Familia)
Dir: Daniel Burman. Arg-It-Fr-Sp.2005. 100mins.Cinema would be a less interesting place if directorsdidn't mine their obsessions, but this is the third time in six years thatDaniel Burman has cast Daniel Hendlerin a comedy-drama about a young Argentinian Jewishman called Ariel who is oppressed by the suspicion that he is not ...
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Reviews
Opal Dream
Dir: Peter Cattaneo. Aus-UK. 2005. 88mins.A sentimental fable about imagination and wonder, Opal Dream should strike a nerve withkids who understand its fragile emotional terrain and how they can create a fantasyworld to improve on their everyday existence.Following the misfire thatwas Lucky Break, Peter Cattaneo's new feature marks something of ...
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Reviews
Longing (Senhsucht)
Dir:Valeska Grisebach. Germany.2006. 88 mins Astory of ordinary love in a defiantly non-glamorous mode, Valeska Grisebach's Longing packs a formidable emotional punch, all the moreso for its spare aesthetic and sure-footed restraint. The director's secondfeature, following 2001's acclaimed Be My Star (Mein Stern), thrives on elliptical storytelling andundemonstratively subtle ...
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Reviews
A Soap (En Soap)
Dir: Pernille Fischer Christensen. Denmark. 2006. 104mins.A woman's picture by definition, ASoap, Pernille Fischer Christensen's auspiciousdebut, should play well with female audiences who will appreciate its intimatesensitivities.Portraying a woman who breaks out of a stagnating relationship and hertranssexual neighbour, the script has the earmarks of the TV soaps it emulates,while ...
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Reviews
Container
Dir: Lukas Moodysson. Sweden. 2006. 74mins. Wilfully obscure and defiantly strange, Lukas Moodysson'sblack-and-white film is as much visual art as cinema. Moodysson would havelittle patience with such subjective categories; but distributors are notoriouslysubjective, and few will touch a film that lacks even the narrative or shock ofMoodysson's previous departure from ...
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Reviews
Candy
Dir: Neil Armfield. Australia.2006. 108minsAlternately dazzling andflashy, affecting and mannered, this impressive debut from feted Australiantheatre director Neil Armfield is lifted to the verge of excellence byoutstanding performances from Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as a pair ofheroin addicts in love. If it doesn't quite scalethe final peak, it's because ...
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Reviews
The Road To Guantanamo
Dirs: Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross. UK. 2006.95mins Michael Winterbottom's reputation as afiercely enterprising and provocative film-maker gets another boost from TheRoad To Guantanamo, co-directed with Mat Whitecross, his editor on 9 Songs.Thedigitally-shot film is a docudrama-style reconstruction of the fate of a groupof young British Muslims who went to Afghanistan ...
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Reviews
Freedomland
Dir: Joe Roth. US. 2006.113mins. Trying to streamline andilluminate Freedomland, Richard Price's panoramic 1998 novel,studio executive Joe Roth is working beyond his range, temperament andsensibility.Unlike other directors whohave adapted the works of Price Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Philip Kaufman,John McNaughton Roth is not a natural or ...
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Reviews
V For Vendetta
Dir:James McTeigue UK-Ger. 133mins.Thelatest Alan Moore graphic novel adaptation, after From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta has A for Auxiliarywritten all over it.It allstarts promisingly enough, with sombre chords and a vintage, black-and-white WarnerBros logo ushering us into a dark vision of a totalitarian Britain ...
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Reviews
El Custodio
Dir:Rodrigo Moreno. Arg/Ger/Fr. 100 mins.ElCustodio did nothing to satisfy festivalBerlinale audiences hungry for a little light entertainment. This study of anArgentinian government minister's police minder is painfully slow, taking allof 90 minutes to build to its first, and last, moment of real action. But itis also a strangely compelling exercise ...
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Reviews
The Elementary Particles
Dir: Oskar Roehler.Germany. 2006. 105mins.Oskar Roehler's The Elementary Particles proves again thefolly of trying to adapt the blatantly unadaptable.Based on French writer Michel Houellebecq's brilliantdisturbing novel about two half-brothers who find love, only for it to besnatched from them, it will disappoint the author's many fans. Houellebecq's novel is, of ...
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Reviews
Grbavica
Dir: Jasmila Zbanic. Aus-Ger-Bosna-Herz-Cro. 2006. 90mins.The recent past looms dark and fearsome over Jasmila Zbanic’s debut feature Grbavica, set in a suburb which witnessed some of the worst massacres of the 1990s Balkan war.Whatever its weaknesses, this coming-of-age story about a teenager and her relationship with her single mother succeeds ...
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Reviews
Slumming
Dir: Michael Glawogger. Aust, 2006. 96mins.Michael Glawogger's Slumminghas something of The Edukators about it, and something ofMike Leigh's Naked: it's about blind existentialrage, arrogant male ennui and what happens when schoolboy pranks turn nasty.But it is not didactic: if anything, Glawogger trustshis own creative instinct too much in this story ...
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Reviews
A Prairie Home Companion
Dir: RobertAltman. US. 2006. 103 mins. RobertAltman's homage to America's favourite radio show, Garrison Keillor's APrairie Home Companion, is a largely spirited affair, despitea few sagging moments. Paradoxically, though, the film may play better in Europeand other territories than in North America, where its central plot of asoulless corporation overtaking ...
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Reviews
Once In A Lifetime
Dirs: PaulCrowder, John Dower. US. 2006. 98 mins. Aiming for the huge double demographicof football fans and 1970s nostalgics, Once In A Lifetime narrates the rise andfall of the New York Cosmos football team which, for a few short years in thelate 1970s, was home to stars of the ...
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Reviews
White Palms (Feher Tenyer)
Dir: Szabolcs Hajdu. Hungary. 2006. 100mins.Szabolcs Hajdu's film casts a jaundicedeye over the world of sports prodigies. A grim and disenchanted portrait of howone young gymnast is almost ruined by a gruelling training programme and theinsatiable expectations of his parents, the film almost runs out of steam inthe second half, ...
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Reviews
Taxidermy (Taxidermia)
Dir: Gyorgy Palfi.Hungary/Austria/France. 2005. 90 mins.Gyorgy Palfi's second feature, whichcollected a slew of awards including best film at the recent Hungarian FilmWeek, is likely to be as much of a talking point as his first film Hukkle,albeit for very different reasons. Spanning three generations of one family,this horror film will ...