Latest – Page 649
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Reviews
Kinsey
Dir/scr: Bill Condon US.2004. 124minsA deftly handled mixture ofpersonal drama and social history, Kinseysculpts a compelling film from the life of the pioneering scientist who devotedhimself to the study of human sexuality. Beautifully judged and paced, it isboth intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying.Illuminating the presentthrough dramatising the past, it offers ...
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Reviews
Shark Tale
Dirs:Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman. USA. 2004. 90mins.Afterbugs and monsters, the DreamWorks versus Disney/Pixar tit-for-tat animationgrudge match has moved on to fish. The latest blow to be struck by theDreamWorks camp, Shark Tale is a colourful, fast-paced, jive-talkingseabed caper that continues the scattershot, kids-and-adults targeting of muchmajor studio animation ...
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Reviews
Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru No Ugoku Shiro)
Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.Japan. 2004. 117mins.Japanese animation geniusHayao Miyazaki's follow-up to the international critical and box-office hit SpiritedAway is as visually inventive and unremittingly charming as itspredecessor. By turns funny, exhilarating and touching, it lacks only onething: the spiritual and metaphysical depth that made Spirited Away sucha haunting experience.While this will ...
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Reviews
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Dir: Alexander Witt. US/Canada/UK. 2004. 94 mins.More zombies, more screen time for Milla Jovovich and the addition ofsome crucial characters from the games themselves are the draw in this sequelto 2002 video game adaptation ResidentEvil. The new elements may not add many non-gamers to the audience for whatis otherwise a ...
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Reviews
Layer Cake
Dir:Matthew Vaughn. UK 2004. 100minsTrue,the directing debut of Matthew Vaughn - who made his name as producer of GuyRitchie's crime capers - is indeed a British gangland thriller. But it carriesfew traces of the saloon-bar jokiness that was Ritchie's trademark in Lock,Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Although slick ...
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Reviews
Enduring Love
Dir: Roger Michell. 2004. UK. 100 mins. After spinningan intense yarn with Hanif Kureishi in TheMother, UK film-maker Roger Michell turns to the ultimate British master ofthe dark side Ian McEwan for his latest film Enduring Love. The result is the most effective film adaptation ofMcEwan to date. Faithful to ...
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Reviews
A Hole In My Heart (Ett Hal I Mitt Hjarta)
Dir: LukasMoodysson. 2004. Sweden/Norway. 98mins.Sweden's LukasMoodysson takes an astonishing journey to the dark heart of humanity in hisfourth feature A Hole In My Heart. Audaciously expressionistic andcinematically experimental, it will be one of Toronto's talking points andprompted plenty of walkouts at the first screenings.Set almostentirely in a dingy apartment in ...
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Reviews
3-Iron
Dir/scr/prod/ed: KimKi-duk. S Kor. 2004. 89mins.An arthouse favourite,now firmly established after last year's Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter' AndSpring, Kim Ki-duk's reputation will be enhanced by his latest work, whichis less extreme but no less intriguing.Coming only seven monthsafter Kim won Best Director at Berlin for Samaritan Girl, this sleek,elegant, stylised ...
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Reviews
I Heart Huckabees
Dir: David O. Russell.US. 2004. 106minsFive years after ThreeKings, writer-director David O Russell returns with an absurdistexistential comedy that is more idiosyncratic and daring than anything he hasmade before. I Heart Huckabees combines the lickety split verbalgymnastics of a Preston Sturges with the philosophical musings of a StephenHawking and then ...
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Reviews
Birth
Dir: Jonathan Glazer.UK-US. 2004. 100mins.Jonathan Glazer'slong-awaited follow-up to Sexy Beast shows the commercials and musicvideo director in austere, minimalist mode. A snail-paced but neverthelesscompelling yarn about a ten-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation ofa woman's dead husband, Birth is half psychological thriller and halfexistential love story. By turns ...
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Reviews
Palindromes
Dir/scr: Todd Solondz.US. 2004. 99mins.Sundance darling ToddSolondz' latest warped take on the American dream is an uneven film, half bigemotional roller coaster, half whimsical fable, that inhabits the Midwesternsuburban wastelands somewhere between the David Lynch Motel and the HarmonyKorine Five-and-Dime. The story of a 12-year-old Kansas girl who is determinedto ...
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Reviews
Mysterious Skin
Dir:Gregg Araki USA. 2004. 99mins.GreggAraki is a film buff's director, one of those independent US mavericks, likeHarmony Korine, whose regular feature outings are staples of the internationalfestival circuit (it plays Toronto after its Orizzonti premiere at Venice) andultra-arthouse theatres, but register only the faintest bleeps on the radar ofthe cinemagoing ...
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Reviews
Strings
Dir:Anders Ronnow Klarlund. Den-Swe-UK-Nor. 2004. 92mins.Say "puppet movie" and most people think of the Muppetsor, at a push, Pinocchio - who has most famously come to life on screen in cartoon and live action form.Traditional marionettes have always messed with the suspension of disbeliefthat appears to be necessary in the ...
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Reviews
Vera Drake
Dir/scr: Mike Leigh.2004. UK/France. 125mins.Mike Leigh's latest tourde force takes the subject of illegal abortion in 1950 London and uses it toair issues of moral integrity, goodness and justice never more relevant than intoday's self-serving social and political climate.In Vera Drake, Leighachieves a level of engagement and intensity of which ...
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Reviews
The Merchant Of Venice
Dir. MichaelRadford. UK-It. 2004. 125mins.Despite beingone of Shakespeare's best known plays, The Merchant Of Venice has seenlittle in the way of film adaptation during the past 50 years or so. While TVhas given us plenty of Shylocks to feast our eyes upon, cinema has offered nocompetition, in part due to ...
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Reviews
A Love Song For Bobby Long
Dir:Shainee Gabel. USA. 2004. 119mins.Oldtrooper Travolta meets rising star Johansson in A Love Song For Bobby Long,a fragile but charming slice of New Orleans bohemiana. It was a nice idea togive the on-screen stand-off between their two characters (he a washed-up,alcoholic former university professor; she a stroppy school dropout with ...
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Reviews
Finding Neverland
Dir: Marc Forster. US.2004. 101mins.It may have been given atitle more redolent of a cheesy TV movie, but anchored by another knockoutperformance by Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland is destined to get plentyof big screen attention later this year.Miramax Films can count onrunaway word-of-mouth and big-time returns both on awards podiums ...
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Reviews
The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro)
Dir: Alejandro Amenabar.Spain. 2004. 127mins.Though Alejandro Amenabar's new film screened only athird of the way into the Venice festival, the gut feeling after the earlypress screening on the Lido was that we had just been watching the Leone D'Oro.Still only 32, Amenabar proves with this moving study of a quadraplegic ...
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Reviews
Vanity Fair
Dir: Mira Nair US/UK2004 140 minsAdapting classic Nineteenth Century novels for the screenis invariably a thankless task. If filmmakers are too brutal paring down bookswhich run to hundreds of pages, they risk straining out the wealth of detailand description which makes the originals memorable in the first place. Ifthey're not ...
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Reviews
The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro) review
Dir: Alejandro Amenabar.Spain. 2004. 127mins.Though Alejandro Amenabar's new film screened only athird of the way into the Venice festival, the gut feeling after the earlypress screening on the Lido was that we had just been watching the Leone D'Oro.Still only 32, Amenabar proves with this moving study of a quadraplegic ...