Latest – Page 624
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Reviews
Opa!
Dir: Udayan Prasad. UK. 2005.97mins.Make no mistake, UdayanPrasad, director of such smart racial explorations as Brothers In Trouble or My SonThe Fanatic, seems to have taken a leave of absence with Opa!, a featherweight romp set in the Greek islands that squeezesthe life out of every Mediterranean recipe in the ...
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Reviews
These Girls
Dir: John Hazlett. Can. 2005. 92minsThe thrust of These Girls sounds like a dirty joke andwhile the situation explored is provocative, it's a real testament to itsfilm-makers and cast that the comedy transcends the snickering and emerges as abright, lively and intelligent entertainment. With its brash mixture of humorand frankness ...
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Reviews
Cave Of The Yellow Dog (Die Hohle Des Gelben Hundes)
Dir: Byambasuren Davaa. Mon-Ger. 2005. 93mins.After the extraordinary success of The Story Of The Weeping Camel, whichshe co-directed with her fellow Munich Film School student Luigi Falorni, Byambasuren Davaa returns to Mongolia for her second film The Cave Of The Yellow Dog, which hasbeen named the official Mongolian entry for ...
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Reviews
Two For The Money
Dir: DJ Caruso. US. 2005.120minsSavvy gamblers shouldn't bet the house on the new high-stakes drama TwoFor The Money in which Al Pacino plays devilish mentor to MatthewMcConaughey (not too dissimilar to his role with Keanu Reeves in Devil'sAdvocate). A cross between Any Given Sunday (which also starredPacino) and Wall Street's ...
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Reviews
Allegro
Dir. Christoffer Boe.Den. 2005. 88mins.Christoffer Boe returnsto themes that he explored in his 2003 Camera D'Or winner Reconstructionwith Allegro, a science-fiction feature that focuses on how a person canwipe away their past while still be reliant on trust and faith.A visually enticing picture,its best chances lie at home in Denmark, ...
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Reviews
Two For The Money
Dir: DJ Caruso. US. 2005.120minsSavvy gamblers shouldn't bet the house on the new high-stakes drama TwoFor The Money in which Al Pacino plays devilish mentor to MatthewMcConaughey (not too dissimilar to his role with Keanu Reeves in Devil'sAdvocate). A cross between Any Given Sunday (which also starredPacino) and Wall Street's ...
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Reviews
All The Invisible Children
Dirs: Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, KatiaLund, Jordan and Ridley Scott, Stefano Veneruso, John Woo. It. 2005. 131mins.Portmanteau films arelike chocolate assortments: pretty boring once all the coffee creams have gone.The latest multi-director outing to test international audiences' limitedappetite for the genre, All The Invisible Children is a worthy ...
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Reviews
Shinobi
Dir: Ten Shimoyama. Jap.2005.101mins.Already sold to 14foreign territories and with strong remake potential, Ten Shimoyama's Shinobiresembles recent Japanese period epics like Red Shadow, SamuraiResurrection and Azumi in its computer game-like structure andtargets their teen audiences accordingly.But in telling his story oftwo warring ninja clans, Shimoyama also aspires to the epic, ...
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Reviews
A Little Trip To Heaven
Dir:Baltasar Kormakur. Ice. 2005. 98mins.For his latest feature A Little Trip To Heaven,Icelandic film-maker Baltasar Kormakur takes audiences on a modest littleadventure in the other direction as well and the familiar hellish genre of themodern neo-noir. This time however the focus is not on some disaffected,world-weary flatfoot and his cheating, ...
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Reviews
The House Of Sand (Casa De Areia)
Dir: Andrucha Waddington.Braz. 2005. 103mins.No, this isn't 2003's HouseOf Sand And Fog after the mist has lifted but Brazilian director AndruchaWaddington's first feature since his well-regarded Me You Them (2000),which won the top prize at Karlovy Vary.Set in northern Brazil'sforbidding state of Maranhao, now a conservation zone, it begins in ...
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Reviews
3 Needles
Dir/scr: Thom Fitzgerald.Can. 2005. 123mins.A film with sweeping emotional heft and extensive geographical remit - fromSouth Africa to China and Montreal via three separate AIDS-themed stories -Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles ultimately falls victim to its own ambition.While it conveys enormoussympathy to both subject and locations shoots it is likely to ...
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Reviews
Sunflower (Xiangrikui)
Dir: Zhang Yang. Chi-HK.2005. 128mins.With SunflowerZhang Yang (The Shower, Quitting) returns with anotherconfrontational saga between father and son, this time in the shape of alargely autobiographical tale that runs from the eve of the Cultural Revolutionup until the present day.Focusing on a single familywhose history is supposed to reflect on ...
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Reviews
C.R.A.Z.Y.
Dir: Jean-Marc Vallee.Can. 2005. 127mins.Recently selected asCanada's submission for the best foreign language Oscar, the family saga C.R.A.Z.Y.emerges as both the quintessence of contemporary cinema from Quebec and a talethat seamlessly taps into a universal zeitgeist.The travails, sexualawakening and socio-political turmoil of the 1970s, as seen through the eyes ofthe ...
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Reviews
The Wild Blue Yonder
Dir: Werner Herzog.Ger-Fr-UK. 81mins.At times in WernerHerzog's docu-drama The Wild Blue Yonder, as the glittering-eyed BradDourif rants at the camera, audiences could be forgiven for thinking that theyare being buttonholed by an extra-planetary version of Samuel TaylorColeridge's Ancient Mariner.Dourif plays an alien fromAndromeda who has been stranded on Earth for ...
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Reviews
Into The Blue
Dir: John Stockwell. US.2005. 110mins.Hot bods and cool underwater cinematography partially make up for a tiredplot and annoying tone in Into The Blue, a lightweight action/adventureabout sexy young things diving for shipwrecks off the Bahamas.Given that the two lead bodsbelong to Jessica Alba - especially hot after Fantastic Four and ...
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Reviews
The White Masai (Die Weisse Massai)
Dir: Hermine Huntgeburth.Ger. 2005. 132mins.Hermine Huntgeburth's TheWhite Masai (Die Weisse Massai) is much less good than it shouldhave been. True, it's handsomely and expensively mounted, beautifully andrigorously shot in an extremely photogenic Kenya, and has a political andcultural heart that is decidedly in the right place. But at two hours-plus ...
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Reviews
Shooting Dogs
Dir: Michael Caton-Jones.UK-Ger. 2005. 114mins.Yes, it is poor timingfor Shooting Dogs, arriving in the wake of the international tour deforce that was Hotel Rwanda and HBO title Sometime In April. Butthere's room for more than one film to be made about the 1994 genocide - or atleast for as long ...
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Reviews
Mrs Harris
Dir: Phyllis Nagy. US.2005. 94mins.Written and directed bynoted playwright and first-time film-maker Phyllis Nagy, Mrs Harris, atleast in its first third, is a jangly, stylised onslaught on sensibilities thatwill alienate many and intrigue just as many others.However, once you becomeused to its anti-rhythms and purposeful edginess - and, truth to ...
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Reviews
Wassup Rockers
Dir/scr: Larry Clark. US.2005. 111mins.In Wassup Rockers,Larry Clark has produced the sweetest, most loving and lovable film he's evermade - and consequently the most boring. If kids (now 10-years-old) wasdeplorable, frightening, and, to some, even degrading, it was always excitingand its hateful, rapacious teenage male lead endlessly fascinating.In his latest ...
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Reviews
Beowulf And Grendel
Dir: Sturla Gunnarsson.Can-UK-Ice. 2005. 103mins.Beowulf And Grendel is a handsomely mounted retelling of the ancientAnglo-Saxon classic from the early Middle Ages, the period in which a nascentChristianity was attempting to establish itself among the warring pagan tribesof northern Europe.It appears that littleexpense was spared, and the cast boasts the likes ...