Latest – Page 647
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Reviews
Brides (Nyfes)
Dir:Pantelis Voulgaris. Gr. 2004. 128minsGreekveteran Pantelis Voulgaris takes audiences on a long, slow voyage in Brideswhich, while mostly shot in English, is unlikely to travel far from its homeport for overseas markets.WithBarbara De Fina and Martin Scorsese as producer and executive producerrespectively, the film might attract international attention, but distributorswill ...
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Reviews
Saint Ralph
Dir/scr:Michael McGowan. Canada. 2004. 98minsThebroad strokes of Saint Ralph (the last production from AllianceAtlantis' production arm) suggest an absurdist comedy. The title character, agangly 14-year-old attending a Catholic school, decides to run and win theBoston Marathon and in so doing create the sort of miracle that will bring hismother - ...
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Reviews
Shall We Dance
Dir: Peter Chelsom. US.2004. 106mins.Plenty gets lost intranslation in Miramax Films' well-appointed US remake of Masayuki Suo'sbeloved 1996 Japanese comedy Shall We Dance' but director Peter Chelsomand his megawatt star cast generate sufficient charm to win hearts anew andscore a mid-sized end-of-year hit around the world.The glitzy teaming of post-Chicago ...
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Reviews
Team America: World Police
Dir: Trey Parker. US.2004. 98mins.Gung-ho Americans,turbaned terrorists and Hollywood peaceniks - they're all fair comedic game forTrey Parker and Matt Stone's Team America: World Police, a raunchyaction movie satire with the weird distinction of being performed by a cast oftraditional Thunderbirds-style puppets. Parker and Stone - best known,of course, as ...
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Reviews
Taxi
Dir: Tim Story. US. 2004.97 mins.Luc Besson's French franchise-starter Taxi certainly seems like a goodcandidate for a US makeover: like its two hugely successful sequels, the hit1998 original was essentially, after all, a Hollywood action comedy with aGallic spin. Whatever potential there may have been, however, is squandered bythis bland ...
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Reviews
Five Children And It
Dir: John Stephenson. UK. 2004. 89mins.A well-produced children's film based on the novel by Railway Childrenwriter E Nesbit, Five Children And It feels out of sync with theentertainment tastes of today's family audiences. Relentlessly pleasant anddevoid of any tension in the plot, it deliberately flies in the face ofcontemporary culture ...
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Reviews
A Dirty Shame
After the laboured comedyof Cecil B Demented, it's reassuring to find John Waters on morefamiliar terrain in A Dirty Shame, a dirty sex comedy which really isgood clean fun. Already slapped with an NC-17 rating in the US by the MPAA, thefilm's gleefully flagrant bad language and sexual situations will ...
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Reviews
Head In The Clouds
Dir/scr: John Duigan.Canada-UK. 2004. 132mins.Head In The Clouds aims to be asweeping romantic epic but it falls short, the victim of a fatal lack of energyand a scale that cannot live up to the film's ambitions. Set in Europe as itbuckles under Fascism, it's the story of an untenable love ...
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Reviews
Going Upriver: The Long War Of John Kerry
Dir. George T. Butler.US. 2004. 130mins.The 2004 US presidential election is widely considered oneof the most divisive in memory, mostly the result of polarity between those whosupport the US-led invasion of Iraq and those who consider it an error equivalentto that nation's adventure in Vietnam a generation ago.A number of ...
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Reviews
Innocent Voices (Voces Inocentes)
Dir. Luis Mandoki. Mexico. 2004. 120mins.Luis Mandoki, the Mexican film-maker whohas built a comfortable career around middling Hollywood melodramas such as WhenA Man Loves A Woman and Message In A Bottle, returns to his LatinAmerican roots with a powerful true story about a young boy growing up in themidst of ...
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Reviews
Yesterday
Dir. Darrell James Roodt.S Africa. 2004. 91mins.Yesterday, DarrellJames Roodt's touching and only too familiar African tragedy, which claims tobe the first Zulu-language feature, has more to offer than unfamiliar language,spectacular landscapes and a touch of exoticism.Without entering any of thepolitical minefields that many films about South Africa (Forgiveness, CountryOf My ...
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Reviews
Bride And Prejudice
Dir: Gurinder Chadha.UK-India-US. 2004 111mins.Bollywood spectacle andBritish comedy of manners collide head on in Gurinder Chadha's Bride AndPrejudice, an entertaining if wildly uneven updating of Jane Austen'snovel.Chadha throws Indian,English and American characters into the mix, cheerfully trading in allavailable national stereotypes as she goes. Much grates. The direction is oftensurprisingly ...
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Reviews
Ladder 49
Dir:Jay Russell. US. 2004. 115mins.America'spost-September 11 love affair with the figure of the heroic firefighter getsthe big screen treatment in Ladder 49, a character-driven action dramapairing a boyish Joaquin Phoenix with a fatherly John Travolta. The pairingworks well enough and the drama is sensitively handled by director Jay Russell(My Dog ...
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Reviews
Crash
Dir:Paul Haggis. US. 2004. 100mins.Whilethe mini-genre it occupies - multi-storylined ensemble pieces aboutdysfunctional life in southern California - is already well-established (see ShortCuts, Magnolia), Crash is a superb, sometimes literallybreath-taking new addition to this august group.First-timefeature director Paul Haggis (a native of Canada who has lived in Los Angelesfor a ...
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Reviews
Three Extremes
Dirs: Fruit Chan, ParkChan-Wook, Takashi Miike. HK-Jap-S Kor. 2004. 127mins.The second of twothree-part omnibus films at this year's Venice Film Festival (the other was theWong Kar-Wai/Soderbergh/Antonioni collaboration Eros), Three Extremes is a tasty showpiece forthree of Asia's hottest directors. In market terms, they are a well-chosen trio- far more so ...
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Reviews
Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha Ham Parvaz Mikonand)
Dir/scr:Bahman Ghobadi. Iran-Iraq, 2004. 95mins.Fouryears after he first emerged on the international scene, first as an actor inSamira Makhmablaf's Blackboards, then as director of A Time ForDrunken Horses, Bahman Ghobadi returns with Turtles Can Fly.Thestory is again located in Ghobadi's native Kurdistan and deals once more withthe tragic misery of ...
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Reviews
Brothers (Brodre)
Dir: Susanne Bier. Den. 2004. 110minsThe consequences of love and the personal trauma ofglobal conflict prove a potent combination in Brothers. The latestcollaboration between Open Hearts director Susanne Bier and screenwriterAnders Thomas Jensen takes the stuff of cheap melodrama and transforms it intoa heartfelt human drama.Once again their collaboration is ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark To Finish
Dir/scr:Peter Greenaway. Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2004. 120mins.Youmay, to paraphrase a football commentator, have thought it was all over. Wellit is now. The final part of Peter Greenaway's seven-hour Tulse Luperopus, From Sark To Finish, unrolled at the Venice Film Festival. Itssubdued reception came as a marked contrast to the anticipatory buzz that ...
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Reviews
The Forgotten
Dir:Joseph Ruben. US. 2004. 90mins.Itstarts out feeling like a slightly soppy episode of The X-Files, withmotherly love replacing paranoia as the driving emotion. But teasing thriller TheForgotten gets perked up by a handful of judiciously used special effectsand a sense of mystery that could be described as Shyamalan-esque (as in ...
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Reviews
Bombon El Perro
Dir. CarlosSorin. Arg-Sp. 2004. 96mins.As spare,intimate and intentionally unglamorous as Carlos Sorin's previous film MinimalStories, Bombon, El Perro is likely to follow a similar fate: rakingin a bagful of festival awards, collecting plenty of favourable reviews andgenerating better than average business on the arthouse circuit.The film won theFIPRESCI award at ...