Latest – Page 693
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Reviews
REVIEW: Sex Is Comedy
Dir: Catherine Breillat. France. 2002. 92 mins.Director's FortnightA welcome reprieve from the joyless intensity of such recent succes de scandale as Romance and A Ma Soeur, Sex Is Comedy allows Catherine Breillat to reveal the kind of light touch and easy humour that some critics may have thought was beyond ...
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Reviews
REVIEW: Marie-Jo And Her Two Lovers
Dir: Robert Guediguian. France. 2001. 124 mins.In CompetitionRobert Guediguian's recent work has fallen into two distinct categories: his tough social stories set in Marseilles (A La Place Du Coeur; La Ville Est Tranquille) and the lighter "contes", or fantasies (Marius Et Jeanette; A L'Attaque!) set in L'Estaque, the working-class port ...
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Reviews
The Importance Of Being Earnest
Dir: Oliver Parker. UK/US. 2002. 97 mins. Three years ago, writer-director Oliver Parker and the UK's Fragile Films re-invented Oscar Wilde's relatively obscure An Ideal Husband for the big screen, opening out the play to delightful effect and earning critical plaudits as well as some impressive box office grosses ($18.5m ...
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Reviews
Insomnia
Dir: Christopher Nolan. US. 2002. 117 mins.Christopher Nolan, the promising writer-director behind Following and Memento, makes an elegant and assured transfer to big-budget, star-driven film-making with Insomnia, one of the rare Hollywood remakes of a European film which is as good as the original. Expertly crafted and eminently intelligent, Insomnia ...
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Reviews
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones
Dir: George Lucas. US. 2002. 143mins.It must be thankless being George Lucas. He may be wading in money, but critics and fans have treated his new Star Wars prequels with such intense scrutiny and disappointment that he has to realise his reputation as a legendary film-maker of 1970s classics American ...
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Reviews
The City Of No Limits (En La Ciudad Sin Limites)
Dir: Antonio Hernandez. Sp-Arg. 2001. 118minsAntonio Hernandez's ensemble feature is a dramatic gem, a beautifully scripted and acted film with a glossy look and universal tale that has the capacity to move audiences anywhere. It represents a marketing challenge to distributors due to its complex storyline and straddling of genres, ...
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Reviews
Smoking Room
Dirs: Julio Wallovits, Roger Gual. Spain. 2002. 89mins.This low-budget debut feature film seemingly came out of nowhere to quietly storm last week's Spanish Film Festival in Malaga, where it created buzz among critics, crowds and even international buyers gathered for a sidebar market. The film marks the debut of ...
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Reviews
Thunderpants
Dir: Peter Hewitt. UK-Germany. 2002. 84mins. The big selling point of Thunderpants for its target audience will also be the main deterrent for their chaperones: the idea of a nondescript, none-too-bright 10-year-old boy with a single extraordinary talent for farting. Our hero's peer group will, of course, love this premise. ...
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Reviews
Femme Fatale
Dir: Brian De Palma. Fr-US 2002. 110mins. With its chances and coincidences, doubles, dream sequences and alternative endings, Femme Fatale is an enigmatic European art-movie lightly disguised as a Hollywood genre thriller. There is certainly enough eye-popping sex and spectacle to steer it to decent box-office returns. In France ...
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Reviews
Australian Rules
Dir: Paul Goldman. Australia. 2002. 98mins.The Australian success of Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence has opened distribution doors previously locked to depictions of Aboriginal issues and racial conflict. In its wake comes Australian Rules, a biting reminder of the distance that still exists between white and indigenous communities in modern Australia. ...
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Reviews
The Repentant (La Repentie)
Dir: Laetitia Masson. France. 2002. 125minsLife is a lie. History is what you make it out to be. And so is this film. Seemingly created for and by Isabelle Adjani, La Repentie is either a triumphant return to the cinema for the enigmatic French screen goddess, after three years of ...
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Reviews
Deuces Wild
Dir: Scott Kalvert. US. 2002. 97minsDeuces Wild is a throwback. Not just because it is set in the world of gang wars in 1950s Brooklyn, but because it so happily recalls those dated rumble movies of the early 1980s like The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Matt Dillon even shows up, ...
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Reviews
Jason X
Dir: Jim Isaac. US. 2002. 93mins.Putting hockey-masked slasher icon Jason into space sounds a desperate idea for reviving the Friday The 13th horror franchise. But while this 10th instalment in the 22-year-old series relies on the same crude, high-body-count schlock appeal as its predecessors, it still manages to have some ...
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Reviews
Hollywood Ending
Dir: Woody Allen. US.2002. 112 mins.Woody Allen's HollywoodEnding follows more in thevein of his recent run of pleasurable but throwaway comedies than it does thefar more emotionally affecting Purple Rose Of Cairo, his other film to deal specifically with cinema itself. With an emphasis on visual humour, both literal and ...
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Reviews
Spider-Man (Spider-Man)
Dir: Sam Raimi. US. 2002. 121mins.Even in the face of new Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings movies, no film this year can have the want-to-see already generated by Columbia Pictures' Spider-Man, a lavish $150m live-action movie of the beloved comic strip, which has been in gestation ...
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Reviews
A Snake Of June (Rokugatsu No Hebi)
Dir: Shinya Tsukamoto. Japan. 2002. 80 mins.Having burst onto the international indie scene in 1989 with Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Shinya Tsukamoto has always been a one-main show, writing, filming, editing and acting his private visions of a nightmare world in which humans have fused to machines, all set to ...
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Reviews
Life Or Something Like It
Dir: Stephen Herek. US. 2002. 103 mins. "Live every day as if it was your last" is the none-too-original moral of Life Or Something Like It, an insipid romantic-comedy/drama that casts Angelina Jolie as a post-feminist Marilyn Monroe who discovers the drawbacks of blonde ambition and the virtues of true ...
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Reviews
Biggie & Tupac
Dir: Nick Broomfield. UK. 2001. 107mins. The ostensible subject of Nick Broomfield's first feature since Kurt & Courtney, his controversial 1998 film about the suicide of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, is the unresolved murders of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Its actual subject is much the same as ...
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Reviews
Casomai
Dir: Alessandro D'Alatri. Italy. 2002. 116mins.Alessandro D'Alatri is back with a stylish romantic comedy which draws more than any of his previous outings on his other job - directing TV commercials. Set in contemporary Milan, Casomai will appeal to the generation it depicts: urban professional thirtysomethings, caught between work, the ...
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Reviews
Murder By Numbers
Dir: Barbet Schroeder. US. 2002. 120mins.Murder By Numbers is an ambitious attempt to make a multi-layered murder investigation film, loosely retelling the chilling Leopold and Loeb case which has intrigued everyone from Alfred Hitchcock in Rope to Tom Kalin in Swoon. And with Barbet Schroeder behind the camera, the film ...