Latest – Page 623
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Reviews
Doom
Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2005. 101mins.Just as knowing one's own intellectual limitations isits own form of intelligence, so it is wise for a film to have a keen sense ofboundary and mission. Sometimes economy is the smartest choice, as Doom, the surprisingly enjoyable newadaptation of the wildly popular first-person videogame ...
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Reviews
Stay
Dir: Marc Forster. US. 2005.103mins.After the mainstream success of his charmingtearjerker Finding Neverland,Monster's Ball director Marc Forstergoes dark and edgy again with Stay, apsychological thriller infatuated with its themes of death, identity, realityand illusion.Forster makes the most ofhis newly earned creative freedom and delivers a stylish, visually inventivefilm that takes ...
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Reviews
St Jacques' La Mecque
Dir/scr: Coline Serreau. Fr. 2005. 112mins.Comedy writer-director ColineSerreau came a cropper two years ago with 18 Years After, a pointless anduninspired sequel to Three Men And A Baby, her 1985 sleeper smash that definitivelyturned the tide for Hollywood's remake industry. Now Serreauattempts to return to the social comedy that is ...
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Reviews
Doom
Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2005. 101mins.Just as knowing one's own intellectual limitations isits own form of intelligence, so it is wise for a film to have a keen sense ofboundary and mission. Sometimes economy is the smartest choice, as Doom, the surprisingly enjoyable newadaptation of the wildly popular first-person videogame ...
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Reviews
Prime
Dir/scr: Ben Younger. US. 2005. 105mins.It's doubtful that Prime, Ben Younger's bittersweet comedyabout the age-gap love affair between an older woman and a younger man, willgenerate as much interest as the recent nuptials of DemiMoore and Ashton Kutcher.Neither as broadly comic noras sophomorically crude as Meet The Parents, it mines ...
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Reviews
The Quiet
Dir: Jamie Babbit. US. 2005. 91mins.Put DesperateHousewives on a double dose of Benzedrine and you have a roughapproximation of Jamie Babbit's The Quiet, an overheated and lurid, if beautifully mounted,American indie melodrama that verges on guilty pleasureterritory for all the wrong reasons.While Desperate Housewives, with its drooling tales of adultery ...
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Reviews
Trust The Man
Dir/scr. Bart Freundlich. US, 2005. 103 mins.An enjoyable and high-spirited romp, Trust The Manis one of the brightest and most uplifting US indiecomedies of late. A screwball romantic comedy, it may not be to all tastes, andthose averse to plot loopholes are advised to stay clear. But Bart Freundlich's fourth ...
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Reviews
Nanny McPhee
Dir: Kirk Jones. UK 2005. 98minsEmma Thompson makes her long-awaited return toactress-screenwriter mode (her first since Sense& Sensibility, for which she won several major awards) with Nanny McPhee,a family film based on the Nurse Mathilda children's books.Also appearing in this taleof seven motherless children, their hapless father (Firth) and theirastonishingly ...
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Reviews
Red Mercury
Dir: Roy Battersby. UK.2005. 110mins.Completed before the July bombings in London, Red Mercury has become one of thoseprescient films which looks somewhat visionary in itschoice of subject matter. But while audiences should find much of it intriguingand compelling, it does not necessarily deliver the dramatic punch it promises.Commercially it stands ...
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Reviews
Feast
Dir. John Gulager. US. 2005. 80mins.The third instalment from the Project Greenlight program, John Gulager's Feastis a stripped down, grungy exercise in blood and gore that agreeably satisfiesthe expectations of the horror movie without transcending or ever slylysubverting the material.The fantastic premise ofreality show Project Greenlight(originally shown on US cable ...
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Reviews
Slow Burn
Dir/scr: Wayne Beach. US. 2005. 93mins.A debut feature directed and written by Wayne Beach, Slow Burn is too reminiscent of The Usual Suspects for its own good, andas such seems more likely to end up at the neighbourhood video store than the nearestmultiplex.It's a tricked out mystery, though rather than ...
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Reviews
The Fog
Dir: Rupert Wainwright. US.2005. 100mins.More turns out to be less in Revolution Studios'overly busy and insufficiently scary remake of John Carpenter's lean 1980horror yarn The Fog. With two youngTV actors starring and British actor-turned-director Rupert Wainwright at thehelm, the remake adds a lot of plot background and a bit of ...
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Reviews
Neverwas
Dir: Joshua MichaelStern. US. 2005. 108mins.Harry Potter flies over the Cuckoo's Nest in Neverwas, a mixed-up attempt to combine a psychologicalthriller with a children's fairytale under the flawed assumption that the twogenres are not that different from each other.While the overall verdict onJoshua Michael Stern's debut feature is unlikely to ...
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Reviews
The Last Hangman
Dir: Adrian Shergold. UK.2005. 90mins.A TV movie in every respect, The Last Hangman should enjoy a highly appreciative reception inits normal habitat, but is unlikely to hold the interest of theatrical audiencesfor all of its 90 minutes.The true story of Albert Pierrepoint, the last hangman in UK before capitalpunishment was ...
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Reviews
Domino
Dir: Tony Scott. US. 2005.127mins.There's something to be said for cinema that avoidsthe comfort margins of the mainstream, and Tony Scott's effusive, edge-skating Domino - a loosely plotted biopic of thedaughter of actor Laurence Harvey, who spurned privilege and became a bountyhunter - is certainly one such offering.Far more pluckythan ...
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Reviews
The Tiger And The Snow (La Tigre E La Neve)
Dir: Roberto Benigni. It. 2005. 114mins.Strictly for those with high schmaltz threshholds, Roberto Benigni's The Tiger And TheSnow will go down well at home, but outside of Italy it isunlikely to extend the fanbase of the madcap Tuscanactor-director.Certainly this £30m ($36m) romance,set against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, ...
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Reviews
The Tin Mine (Mahalai Meung Rae)
Dir: Jira Maligool. Thai. 2005. 110mins.A picture that presents life working underground asan uplifting, character-building experience is nothing if not an oddity. Andwhile this attitude should bestow on TheTin Mine - Thailand's best foreign language Oscar submission - adistinctiveness all of its own, it is hard to guess how much ...
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Reviews
Pavee Lackeen
Dir: Perry Ogden. Ire. 2005.87mins.Perry Ogden's debut feature Pavee Lackeen, which charts the lives of Irishtravellers on the outskirts of Dublin, joins a long list of desolate portraits- including Hector Babenco's Pixote and the Dardennes' brothers' Rosetta- as a harsh and grim indictment of Western society's uncompromising treatmenttowards children.Shot on ...
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Reviews
Lie With Me
Dir: Clement Virgo. Can.2005. 92mins.Graphic sex and a voracious, predatory femaleprotagonist are the hallmarks of Lie With Me, a raw perspective of carnality that's initiallydisarming in its aggressive stance and mesmerising inits heady resolve.Belying thesensuality of The Lover or thegentleness of 9 Songs, it only beginsto falter when it abandons ...
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Reviews
The Willow Tree (Beed-e Majnoon)
Dir: MajidMajidi. Iran. 2005. 96minsWith The Willow Tree, Iranian film-maker MajidMajidi gives in to the mawkish melodramatictendencies he was always managed to keep at arm's length in past works like Colours Of Paradiseand Baran.As in Colours Of Paradise he uses blindness asan allegory, this time for a grand diatribe against ...