Latest – Page 627
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Reviews
Don't Tell
Dir:Cristina Comencini. It-UK-Sp-Fr. 2005. 120mins.Thestrongest of the three Italian films in competition at Venice this year, Don'tTell will nevertheless struggle to extend worthy local director CristinaComenicini's limited international appeal.GiovannaMezzogiorno's gritty performance as a soon-to-be-mother forced to deal for thefirst time with the ghosts of child abuse in her childhood netted ...
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Reviews
Capote
Dir. Bennett Miller. US. 2005. 110mins.Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers agalvanising and awards-worthy performance in Capote, the superbdramatisation of US novelist Truman Capote at the zenith of his career: the sixyears from 1959 to 1965 that he devoted to his ground-breaking 'non-fiction'novel In Cold Blood.But the real star of the show ...
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Reviews
Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story
Dir: Michael Winterbottom. UK. 2005. 91mins.Michael Winterbottom's deliriously funny film-about-a-filmof 18th century novel Tristram Shandy is the prolific director's mostenjoyable feature to date. Based around the gigantic comic talents of SteveCoogan, A Cock And Bull Story is both Winterbottom's affectionate homageto film-making itself and a snapshot of UK talent and ...
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Reviews
Mrs Henderson Presents
Dir: Stephen Frears. UK.2005. 103mins.A jaunty combination ofsocial history, screwball comedy and theatrical kitsch, Mrs HendersonPresents offers a sparkling, emotion-charged stroll down memory lane. Adeliciously witty script by Martin Sherman is seized upon with relish by JudiDench who gives a spellbinding, tour de force as the merry widow behindLondon's Windmill ...
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Reviews
Shopgirl
Dir: Anand Tucker. US.2005. 106mins.Shopgirl is a love letter to Clare Danes. The camera caressesher features, gazes adoringly into her tear-filled eyes and celebrates hertalent in a way that has rarely been seen since the MGM heyday of George Cukor.If you weren't besotted byher before then you should be after ...
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Reviews
Shopgirl
Dir: Anand Tucker. US.2005. 106mins.Shopgirl is a love letter to Clare Danes. The camera caressesher features, gazes adoringly into her tear-filled eyes and celebrates hertalent in a way that has rarely been seen since the MGM heyday of George Cukor.If you weren't besotted byher before then you should be after ...
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Reviews
Thank You For Smoking
Dir. Jason Reitman. US.2005. 92mins.First-time director JasonReitman pulls off the miraculous feat of creating a single-issue comedy thatretains its freshness and drive throughout with his satire Thank You ForSmoking.It's a bristling, wickedlysmart portrait of a lobbyist named Nick Naylor (Eckhart), who makes his living orrather, in the running motif that ...
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Reviews
L'Enfer
Dir: DanisTanovic. Fr-It-Bel-Jap. 2005. 98mins.Forget everythingyou thought you knew about Danis Tanovic, whose debut feature No Man's Land(2001) won the best foreign language Oscar. L'Enfer, his sophomoreeffort, leaves behind his native Balkan territory and its stalemate politics totackle a far more subtle, complex and less evident theme.The script he useswas ...
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Reviews
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
Dir: Park Chan-wook. SKor. 2005. 113mins.Few contemporarydirectors are able to mix genres and moods as confidently as Park Chan-wook -and get away with it. The third and final part of the Korean director'sJacobean revenge trilogy, after Sympathy For Mr Vengeance and Oldboy,is the most daring of the lot in the ...
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Reviews
Edmond
Dir: Stuart Gordon. US.2005. 81mins.You never know how aDavid Mamet adaptation is going to turn out. The best of the last 10 years, Oleanna,was the one that stayed closest to its stage original in the college settingand the claustrophobic one-to-one stand-off of the two main characters.William H Macy starred thereand ...
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Reviews
Pride & Prejudice
Dir Joe Wright. 2005UK-US-Fr. 127mins.There'sno question that 19th-century English novelist Jane Austen still has shapelylegs. Ang Lee's Sense & Sensibility (1995) enjoyed seven Oscarnominations (including best picture) and $134m box-office worldwide, $43m fromthe US alone, while Colin Firth owes his career to a 1995 BBC version of Pride & Prejudice ...
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Reviews
Mary
Dir: Abel Ferrara.It-Fr-US. 2005. 83mins.Watching Abel Ferrara's Maryis like watching an odd religious ritual taking place in a language we onlyhalf understand. We recognise the power of the ceremony, and the commitment ofthose involved - but as for what the hell is going on, and what it all means,and whether ...
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Reviews
Everlasting Regret (Changhen ge)
Dir: Stanley Kwan.Chi-HK. 2005. 115mins.With EverlastingRegret, Stanley Kwan delivers a women's film par excellence; the kind thatfilm-makers such as Douglas Sirk loved to spin out and that Kwan himself hassuccessfully proved adept at in the past.A sprawling, melancholystory about unrequited love adapted from one of modern China's most successfulnovels, it ...
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Reviews
Imagine Me And You
Dir/scr: Ol Parker.UK-Ger. 2005. 93minsOl Parker ventures intoRichard Curtis territory for his directorial debut Imagine You And Me, apleasant romantic comedy that often appears torn between its more soulful, reflectiveinstincts and the lure of following the crowd-pleasing Curtis formula. Theformula generally wins even if the mismatched lovers on this occasion ...
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Reviews
Revolver
Dir/scr: Guy Ritchie. Fr-UK. 2005. 110mins.After the fiasco of Swept Away there wasnowhere to go but up for writer/director Guy Ritchie. Retreating to the safeterritory of gangland squabbles, dirty deeds, diamond geezers and hardcoreviolence must have seemed like a good idea but Revolver is such aconvoluted, risibly overwrought muddle of ...
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Reviews
Oliver Twist
Dir: Roman Polanski.Fr-UK-Czech Rep. 2005. 128mins.Roman Polanski made thisnew version of Oliver Twist for his children, but it's hard to imaginekids anywhere warming to his austere, colourless treatment of the story.Oliver Twist here evokes both Polanski's traumatic childhood andthe Wladyslaw Szpilman character in The Pianist - a blameless humandesperate to ...
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Reviews
Tideland
Dir: Terry Gilliam. UK-Can.2005. 121mins.Terry Gilliam has spent hisentire career celebrating the power of the imagination to transcend the awfulrealities of life and death. He has described Mitch Cullin's Tideland as"Alice In Wonderland meets Psycho" and it sounds like idealmaterial for him.Unfortunately, thismacabre, longwinded fantasy is closer in tone to ...
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Reviews
Breakfast On Pluto
Dir: Neil Jordan. Ire-UK. 2005. 135mins.Neil Jordan comes over all Almodovar in BreakfastOn Pluto, a sprawling, picaresque account of a young transvestite's epicodyssey in search of his mother. Jordan has a patchy record with broad comicmaterial (High Spirits, We're No Angels etc) and this reunionwith Butcher Boy writer Patrick McCabe ...
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Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
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Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...