Latest – Page 651
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Reviews
Wall (Mur)
Dir/scr: SimoneBitton. France. 2004. 99minsA poetic reflectionof the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Simone Bitton's documentary focuses itsattention on the massive wall put up by the Sharon government to separate theJewish community from the Arab and, arguably, defuse the terrorist threat.Born a Jew into the Arabian culture ofMorocco but brought up in Israel, ...
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Reviews
Nelly (A Ce Soir)
Dir: Laure Duthilleul.Fr. 2004. 94mins.The complaint isfrequently made that the French production system too often allows film-makersto please themselves rather than justify their intentions to an audience. Thisis a charge unfortunately born out by Nelly, a small, eccentric dramathat was clearly a labour of love for director Laure Duthilleul, but ...
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Reviews
Yasmin
Dir: Kenny Glenaan. UK-Ger.2004. 87minsThree years ago, GasAttack won the Michael Powell Award at Edinburgh and marked out KennyGlennan as a promising new directorial talent. Yasmin confirms hisstatus as a social realist with an ability to focus on the human element in anyheadline-grabbing dramatic situation.Sensitively observed andeconomically staged, Yasmin tells ...
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Reviews
The Ninth Day (Der Neunte Tag)
Dir. VolkerSchloendorff. Ger-Lux. 2004. 97mins.Despiteinitial appearances and a long prologue set inside Dachau concentration camp,Volker Schloendorff's The Ninth Day is no Holocaust film, but a neartheological dissertation on Catholicism and how it held up under the Nazi rule.The victims thistime are not Jews but the Catholic priests sent to concentration ...
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Reviews
Collateral
Dir: Michael Mann. US. 2004. 119 mins. An intriguing noir thriller with an arresting digitalvideo look, Collateral returns masterstylist Michael Mann to the crime genre in which he first made his reputationand earned his loyal cineaste following. If the finished product never achievesthe intensity of Mann's 1995 crime classic Heat- ...
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Reviews
The Village
Dir/sc: M. NightShyamalan. US 2004. 107 minsOstensibly setin the late 19th Century (though the precise period is not specified until latein the final reel), The Village is anarch and eccentric affair. M. Night Shyamalan's craftsmanship and originalityare not in doubt, but his attempts to combine Blair Witch-like horror with ScarletLetter-style ...
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Reviews
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Dir: Danny Leiner.USA 2004. 87 min.There's something sweet, almost childlike about a filmthat equates freedom and the American dream with a fast-food hamburger. But inthe puerile stoner buddy comedy Harold& Kumar Go To White Castle, a sort of melting-pot After Hours for the multiplex set that will likely divide audiencesin ...
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Reviews
In The Battlefields (Maarek Hob)
Dir/scr:Danielle Arbid. Fr-Bel-Leb. 2004. 90minsThe war thatengulfed Lebanon in the early 1980s, turning Beirut from the Paris of theMiddle East into a scarred wasteland of pockmarked and rusting buildings, isonly a metaphor for the chaos and turmoil that most interests the youngLebanese documentary and shorts film-maker Danielle Arbid in her ...
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Reviews
Marseille
Dir:Angela Schanelec. Germany. 2004. 95minsAngelaSchanelec's Marseille starts badly and gets worse. Festival-goers - thefilm played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes - are all too familiar with the kindof movie in which someone unnamed wanders aimlessly and interminably, withoutbenefit of characterisation or plot, around a city. The sad thing about ...
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Reviews
Catwoman
Dir: Pitof. US. 2004. 105 mins.Warner Bros' push to develop new franchises from the characters in its DCComics stable gets off to a shaky start with Catwoman, a flashy butuninvolving Batman spin-off (of sorts) with Halle Berry starring andone-named French talent Pitof directing.Berry's popularity, as well as brand and character ...
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Reviews
She Hate Me
Dir: Spike Lee. US. 2004. 138 mins.There is not a more fascinating - and exasperating -film-maker working today than Spike Lee. He is one of the few directors whosecontrol of the medium is so assured and his style so elegant that a viewercan't help but be sucked into his world. ...
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Reviews
The Manchurian Candidate
Dir:Jonathan Demme. US. 2004. 130 mins.While not all of the choices made in it are successful, Jonathan Demme'scontemporary revamp of John Frankenheimer's marvelous The ManchurianCandidate is unquestionably one of the smarter, more persuasive films toemerge out of a Hollywood studio this year. Loaded with the intensity you'dexpect a cast led ...
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Reviews
The Bourne Supremacy
Dir: Paul Greengrass. US. 2004. 109 mins.Two years ago, it was indie director Doug Liman who turned Robert Ludlumadaptation The Bourne Identity into a surprise summer hit forUniversal. Now British director Paul Greengrass, who previously made festivalprize-winning docudrama Bloody Sunday, gets his chance for a mainstreamUS breakthrough with sequel The ...
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Reviews
I, Robot
Dir: Alex Proyas.2004. USA.Will Smithreturns to what he does best - kicking ass in summer popcorn movies- in the high-tech thriller I, Robot, a workmanlike sci-fi/action hybrid from dystopiandarling Alex Proyas that fuses the burgeoning artificial intelligence industrywith homeland security concerns, proposing a nightmarish scenario ofenlightened robots running amok through ...
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Reviews
Leon And Olvido
Dir. Xavier Bermudez.Spain. 2004. 112mins.A coming-of-age picture with a difference, Leon And Olvido, XavierBermudez's tale of an adolescent afflicted with Down's syndrome and hisinfatuation with his older sister walks a narrow path between bad taste andhigh melodrama. Thankfully it manages, almost until the end, to avoid slippinginto shoddy predictability and ...
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Reviews
Stage Beauty
Dir:Richard Eyre. US-UK. 2004. 106minsLikeits cross-dressing hero Ned Kynaston (who makes his name playing female partson stage), Stage Beauty isn't entirely sure of its own identity. On theone hand, this is a bawdy and colourful Restoration-era romp, stuffed full ofpuns and sexual innuendo and propelled by some tremendous character turns. ...
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Reviews
Right Now (A Tout De Suite)
Dir/scr:Benoit Jacquot. France. 2004. 95minsBenoitJacquot's Right Now contains a series of incidents rather than what onemight usually call a story - which hits just the right note for this study of ayoung woman drifting without a compass through a tumultuous period of her life.Based on events that happened to Elisabeth ...
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Reviews
King Arthur
Dir:Antoine Fuqua. US-Ireland/UK. 2004. 115mins.Billedas 'The untold true story that inspired the legend,' producer JerryBruckheimer's big-budget King Arthur ditches the mysticism and most ofthe romance usually associated with Arthurian tales and attempts to replacethem with gritty historical realism - or at least with something that's asclose to gritty realism as ...
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Reviews
Moolaade
Dir:Ousmane Sembene. Senegal-Fr. 2004. 123minsBest intentions donot always make best films, and though there is no doubt about the relevance ofan issue as painful as female genital mutilation in Africa, Ousmane Sembene'streatment looks too much like an over-extended politically-correct tract thatwill not go far beyond the strict confines of ethnographic ...
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Reviews
Thirst
Dir. Tawfik Abu Wael.Israel-Palestine. 110mins.A typical choice for Critics' Week at Cannes this year,Tawfik Abu Wael's first film is slow, elaborate and spare and, while itfunctions perfectly as a metaphor, will have trouble keeping its audience alertonce its symbols have been adequately deciphered.A brave debut for the28-year-old director, an Arab-Israeli ...