Latest – Page 680
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Reviews
Flower Of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal)
Dir. Claude Chabrol. France. 2003. 104mins.Opinion is likely to differ on Flower Of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal), the new opus from Claude Chabrol, one of the soundest names in Gallic cinema. His numerous admirers will once again appreciate this insidious ironic study of the provincial bourgeoisie, while detractors will ...
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Reviews
My Life Without Me
Dir: Isabel Coixet. Spain-Canada. 2003. 106 mins.My Life Without Me is Love Story with attitude. Sarah Polley - who turns in one of those performances that shift an acting career into a higher gear - even looks a little bit like Ali McGraw. But while audiences should go armed ...
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Reviews
Good Bye, Lenin!
Dir: Wolfgang Becker. Germany. 2003. 123mins.Leading a strong home team at this year's Berlinale, competition entry Goodbye Lenin! is a high-concept fall-of-the-Wall comedy drama that has much going for it: a strong script, an extremely watchable lead in Daniel Bruhl, photography with a sharp, clean, cinematic gloss and a Nyman-like ...
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Reviews
The Life Of David Gale
Dir: Alan Parker. US. 2002. 128mins.The prosecution's case prevails in passing judgement on The Life of David Gale, a polemical thriller which has all the conviction and brio one expects of an Alan Parker film, but is let down by the two central performances and a spectacularly feeble script. Well-positioned ...
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Reviews
I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura)
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores. Italy. 2003. 107mins.An atmospheric, good-looking child's-view thriller set around a kidnapping in southern Italy during the 1970s, I'm Not Scared is Gabriele Salvatores 11th film. It is also his best: at last the Milanese director, whose previous films have been dragged down by a taste for grotesque, ...
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Reviews
Final Destination 2
Dir: David R Ellis. US. 2003. 97mins. Teen horror franchises usually take a while to get around to jokey self-parody. New Line's sequel to its mid-level 2000 hit Final Destination speeds up the process by adding a string of comically over-the-top death scenes to a plot shamelessly recycled from the ...
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Reviews
What Alice Found
Dir: A. Dean Bell. US. 2003. 96mins.A well-matched combination of intelligent drama and understated performances, What Alice Found is a gem. Much more than the sum of its parts, it explores the emotional dynamics of a young woman who thinks she's found the ideal mother and then discovers she's not ...
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Reviews
Camp
Dir: Todd Graff. US. 2002. 115mins.Of all the films in dramatic competition at this year's Sundance Film Festival, none was as full of undiluted pleasures as Todd Graff's directorial debut Camp. A deliriously good-natured romp through the lives of a bunch of precocious kids attending a summer camp for actors, ...
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Reviews
Capturing The Friedmans
Dir: Andrew Jarecki. US. 2003. 107minsCapturing The Friedmans walked away with this year's Sundance grand jury prize for best documentary and deservedly so. An engrossing, troubling and, in the end, profoundly ambiguous re-examination of a child molestation case that tore one upper-middle class family apart on New York's Long Island ...
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Reviews
Remember Me (Ricordati Di Me)
Dir: Gabriele Muccino. It-Fr-UK. 2003. 100mins.Remember Me, Italian golden boy Gabriele Muccino's fourth film, exposes the terrifying moral and intellectual void at the heart of modern Italy. Unfortunately, it's not trying to - at least not very hard. Rather than channelling the emptiness to make a point about today's TV-fed, ...
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Reviews
The Recruit
Dir: Roger Donaldson. US. 2003. 115mins. Ireland's Colin Farrell proves that he has warranted Hollywood's grooming in The Recruit, a slick, improbable thriller driven by his charismatic movie star presence which even puts Al Pacino in the shade. Farrell has already demonstrated his considerable talent in Tigerland, Hart's War and ...
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Reviews
Confidence
Dir: James Foley. 2002. US. 98minsJames Foley's con-thriller, Confidence, tries to be as clever as the word play in its title, but this attempt at a clever-clever heist story fails due to a slack script and so-so performances. Despite some snappy dialogue, twists and turns and toying with the linear ...
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Reviews
Noi The Albino (Noi Albinoi)
Dir: Dagur Kari. Ice-Ger-UK-Den. 2003. 95mins.Noi The Albino, the debut feature of young Icelandic director Dagur Kari, is one of those films that seem absolutely of their own place and yet curiously cosmopolitan. With its characteristically Nordic comic melancholia and strikingly photographed scenery, it could not have been made anywhere ...
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Reviews
Owning Mahowny
Dir. Richard Kwietniowski. Can-UK. 2003. 107mins.A low-key character study of an extraordinary man, Owning Mahowny tells the true story of a nebbish Canadian bank employee who embezzled millions from his employers to feed his addiction to gambling. Directed with austerity by Richard Kwietniowski and played by the riveting Philip Seymour ...
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Reviews
The Station Agent
Dir: Tom McCarthy. 2002. US. 90minsAs often at Sundance, the real winners are to be found among the recipients of the audience award and not the Grand Jury Prize. This year was no exception as newcomer Tom McCarthy's crowd-pleaser, The Station Agent, proved the talk of Park City all week, ...
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Reviews
All The Real Girls
Dir: David Gordon Green. USA. 2002. 105 mins. Young writer-director David Gordon Green lives up to the poetic promise shown by his acclaimed but little-seen first feature, George Washington, with this exquisite dissection of young heartbreak that is similarly set amid the gorgeously-shot industrial decay of North Carolina. An art-house ...
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Reviews
American Splendor
Dir: Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini. US. 2003. 105 mins. American Splendor tells the true story of Harvey Pekar, the writer of the American Splendor comic book series which depicts the inanities of Pekar's humdrum life. A sort of celebration of ennui, or triumph of the nerd saga, the ...
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Reviews
Pieces Of April
Dir: Peter Hedges. US. 2003. 80 mins. Sweet, neat and oh-so-slight, Pieces Of April marks another triumph for InDigEnt, the digital film-making initiative behind Personal Velocity, Tadpole, Tape and Chelsea Walls. Budgeted at some $150,000, the film looks good and hits all the same buttons you would expect from a ...
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Reviews
Fear X
Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn. Denmark-UK. 2002. 91mins.Abandoning the mean streets of the Copenhagen underworld to make his first American-set feature film, Nicolas Winding Refn has crafted an intensely eerie psycho-drama that plays unnerving mind-games with the audience right through to its ambiguous and rather abrupt end. Evoking at times David ...
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Reviews
Just Married
Dir: Shawn Levy. US. 2002. 94 mins.Broad comedy, flimsy romance and some decorative European settings are the key ingredients in Just Married, a young-skewing romantic comedy from producer Robert Simonds. Grossing a surprising $34m after 10 days on US release, the $18m project has also become the film to knock ...