Latest – Page 660

  • Reviews

    Head On (Gegen die Wand)

    16 February 2004

    Dir. Fatih Akin. Germany. 2004. 120 mins.Reinforced by this year's Golden Bear award, Fatih Akin's reputation as the foremost exponent of emigrant life in Germany shines through in this tale of a mismatched couple, one a 20-year-old rebellious girl of Turkish origin, the other a self-destructive drunk twice her age ...

  • Reviews

    Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido)

    16 February 2004

    Dir Daniel Burman Argentina/France/Italy/Spain. 2003. 101 mins.Argentinian director Daniel Burman's fourth feature, which picked up the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at this year's Berlinale, is a bittersweet comedy of national, personal and religious identity set in a Jewish inner city suburb of Buenos Aires at the low point of ...

  • Reviews

    Ae Fond Kiss

    16 February 2004

    Dir: Ken Loach. UK-It-Ger-Sp. 2004. 103 mins.Ken Loach is famous for shooting in sequence and not revealing key plot details to his actors beforehand, in order to catch the freshness of their shock or anger unfiltered by rehearsal. It's been a while since he's startled his fans in the same ...

  • Reviews

    The Final Cut

    13 February 2004

    Dir: Omar Naim. Italy. 2004. 104 mins.The best thing about this sci-fi thriller starring Robin Williams is its premise. The idea that advance in neurotechnology will one day allow us to video our whole lives from somewhere inside our brains throws up all kinds of issues about privacy, about the ...

  • Reviews

    Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (To Livadi Pou Dakrisi)

    13 February 2004

    Dir. Theo Angelopoulos. Greece/France/Italy/Germany, 2004. 178mins.This majestic three hour-long epic, possibly the most abstract in Theo Angelopoulos' career, is unlikely to affect his position either in the eyes of ardent admirers, who consider him one of the last modernists in cinema, nor in the opinion of his detractors, who have ...

  • Reviews

    Les Choristes

    13 February 2004

    Dir: Christophe Barratier. France. 2003. 95 mins.The hottest ticket at the European Film Market in Berlin this year, Les Choristes is the kind of heart-warming, sentimental yarn that some critics might look down on but which crowds are bound to queue around the block for. Fictionally covering the same territory ...

  • Reviews

    Beautiful Country

    12 February 2004

    Dir: Hans Petter Moland. Norway/US. 2004. 126 mins.A beautifully photographed but dramatically clunky saga about a Vietnamese war child's journey to rejoin his father in America, Beautiful Country is as much Terence Malick's film as it is that of Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland. Malick wrote the treatment, co-produced and ...

  • Reviews

    The Stratosphere Girl

    12 February 2004

    Dir/scr: M X Oxberg. Ger-UK-Fr-Switz-It. 2004. 92 mins.It's a chilly place, the stratosphere, and the air can get pretty rarefied. Nothing wrong with that, of course: but down here on earth, cinemagoers need a little character warmth and a little story oxygen, and the third feature by young German director ...

  • Reviews

    Red Lights (Feux Rouges)

    11 February 2004

    Dir: Cedric Kahn. France. 2003. 106 mins.Imagine a bleak and edgy feature-length episode of Mr Bean co-directed by Robert Bresson and Vincent Gallo. Then imagine that it's actually rather good. Dark and unconventional, this road thriller by Roberto Succo director Cedric Kahn gets under the skin in ways that it's ...

  • Reviews

    Saw

    11 February 2004

    Dir: James Wan. US. 2004. 100mins.Saw is a sub-Se7en B-movie serial killer chiller with more high concepts stuffed into its 100 minutes than it can handle. Riddled with plot holes and with a final twist which aficionados of the genre will spot a mile off, it nevertheless possesses a hankering ...

  • Reviews

    Before Sunset

    11 February 2004

    Dir: Richard Linklater. USA. 2004. 82 mins.The sequel to Richard Linklater's brief encounter movie Before Sunrise is utterly charming, and has a light but not superficial touch that is all too rare in contemporary boy-meets-girl flicks. Virtually plotless, it is (like many of Linklater's films) a wordy trip which takes ...

  • Reviews

    Intimate Strangers (Confidences Trop Intimes)

    10 February 2004

    Dir. Patrice Leconte. France, 2003. 104 mins.This brilliantly written, superbly acted, witty two-hander, directed with clockwork precision, finds director Patrice Leconte in top form, doing what he does best - engineering encounters between two opposite characters and watching them squirm. A sentimental thriller, to use his own definition, providing a ...

  • Reviews

    Country Of My Skull

    10 February 2004

    Dir. John Boorman. UK-Ireland-South Africa. 2003While there is no reason to doubt the profound sincerity and laudable intentions behind this adaptation of Antjie Krog's book, John Boorman's portrait of South Africa grappling with its own terrible past during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) - whose purpose was to clear ...

  • Reviews

    Daybreak (Om Jag Vander Mig Om)

    10 February 2004

    Dir. Bjorn Runge. Sweden, 2004. 108 mins.Already the recipient of four Swedish Oscars and a hit in its home territory, Bjoern Runge's fourth feature turns out to be yet another one of the recently fashionable multi-episode panoramic spreads that portray contemporary family life in various states of distress. Three separate, ...

  • Reviews

    First Love (Primo Amore)

    10 February 2004

    Dir: Matteo Garrone. Italy. 2004. 98mins.The only Italian film in competition at Berlin, Matteo Garrone's First Love takes an unflinching look at the subject of anorexia. It is as painful an experience for the audience as it appears to be for the protagonist: by the end, we feel that we ...

  • Reviews

    The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part II: Vaux To The Sea

    10 February 2004

    Dir: Peter Greenaway Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2004. 120mins.Part two of the movie arm of Peter Greenaway's gloriously megalomaniac multimedia project The Tulse Luper Suitcases is, if anything, even more ravishingly weird and hermetic than Part I: The Moab Story, which screened at Cannes last year (the second part enjoyed at special screening ...

  • Reviews

    In Your Hands (Forbrydelser)

    9 February 2004

    Dir Annette K. Olesen. Denmark. 2003. 100 mins.Annette K. Olesen's In Your Hands is the latest Danish film to receive an official Dogme95 certificate, and is the easily the most muscular, in dramatic terms, since the first, Thomas Vinterberg's revelatory family tragedy Festen. In the same big moral vein as ...

  • Reviews

    Walk On Water

    6 February 2004

    Dir. Eytan Fox. Israel 2004. 93 mins.Back in the opening slot of the Berlin Panorama for a repeat performance after last year's Yossi And Jagger, Israeli director Eytan Fox is no longer content with modest, intimate challenges. His new effort is part spy thriller, part psychological drama, and covers much ...

  • Reviews

    One Perfect Day

    6 February 2004

    Dir: Paul Currie. Australia. 2003. 105minsTelling their tale of a young 'genius' who rejects composing at London's fusty old Royal Academy of Music in favour of spinning the decks at Melbourne clubs and Outback raves, it was essential that the makers of One Perfect Day got the soundtrack right. This ...

  • Reviews

    Akame 48 Waterfalls (Akame Shijyuyataki Shinjyumisui)

    4 February 2004

    Dir: Genjiro Arato. Japan. 2003. 159minsA veteran producer of Seijun Suzuki (Zigeunerweisen, Kageroza, Yumeji) and the director of the 1995 The Girl Of The Silence, Genjiro Arato has returned to screen after an absence of eight years with Akame 48 Waterfalls, a film with Suzuki's characteristic mix of traditional Japanese ...