Latest – Page 694
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Reviews
The Scorpion King
Dir: Chuck Russell. US. 2002. 92mins.The Mummy franchise lives on in this rumbustious, two-fisted prequel that serves up breathless, B-movie action with A-level production values. Promoted to centre stage, Dwayne Johnson, aka wrestler The Rock, lays down a persuasive marker as a 21st-century action hero and the heady mixture of ...
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Reviews
The Warrior
Dir: Asif Kapadia. UK/India. 2001. 86minsA poised and confident first feature, The Warrior is an ambitious mixture of morality tale and sweeping adventure set against the spectacular scenery and burning light of Rajasthan and the Himalayas. The absorbing story of one man's renunciation of violence and his quest for peace ...
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Reviews
The Hour Of Religion (L'Ora di Religione)
Dir: Marco Bellocchio. Italy. 2002. 103mins.The term "auteur" is not much used these days outside of ironic quotation marks. But it is difficult to think of a better description for Italian director Marco Bellocchio, now well into his fourth creative decade. The story of an atheist painter who suddenly discovers ...
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Reviews
Changing Lanes
Dir: Roger Michell. US. 2002. 98 mins. Part psychological thriller, part urban morality play, Changing Lanes is that rare Hollywood offering that works both as genre entertainment and as something more complex and thought-provoking. Deftly directed - in a significant change of mood from his 1999 romantic-comedy Notting Hill - ...
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Reviews
The Shanghai Spell (El Embrujo De Shanghai)
Dir: Fernando Trueba. Spain. 2002. 122mins.Lush, even exotic, set designs and costumes are the biggest draws for The Shanghai Spell (El Embrujo De Shanghai), Oscar-award winning director Fernando Trueba's (Belle Epoque) 1940s drama. Trueba's reputation, and strong international interest in his recent hits such as jazz documentary 54th Street (Calle ...
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Reviews
KT
Dir: Junji Sakamoto. Jap. 2001. 138mins.A thriller about the true-life 1973 kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung, the current South Korean president, from a Tokyo hotel, KT tries for a no-frills approach that presents its knotty Cold War story in realistic shades of grey, as if John Le Carre was transposed to ...
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Reviews
Dandy (La Bande Du Drugstore)
Dir: Francois Armanet. France. 2001. 98 mins.Dandy suffers from some of the same superficiality as the posturing, blow-dried youths it portrays. It's difficult to see this film, about Parisian rich kids during the mid to late 1960s, appealing to their modern-day peers in the 16 to 20-year-old age group, who ...
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Reviews
Take Care Of My Cat
Dir: Jeong Jae-eun. Korea. 2001. 112 mins.Take Care Of My Cat is a sympathetic, modern coming-of-age movie. As such it is a Korean antidote to the make-believe and squeaky-clean Hollywood approach adopted by Britney Spears-vehicle Crossroads, which examines a similar demographic. Structured as a slightly unbalanced five-hander with a tone ...
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Reviews
God's Bankers (I Banchieri Di Dio)
Dir: Giuseppe Ferrara. Italy. 2002. 127mins.With its controversial reconstruction of the life and mysterious death of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, Giuseppa Ferrara's latest film was designed to create an even bigger stir than his earlier political outings. God's Bankers has done so on one level at least: at the end ...
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Reviews
The Best Day Of My Life (Il Piu Bel Giorno Della Mia Vita)
Dir: Cristina Comencini. Italy-UK 2002. 102 mins.Like all of Cristina Comencini's films, The Best Day Of My Life is about relationships: family relationships, sexual relationships and the troubled relationship between the two. A large ensemble piece, it features some of the strongest acting talents on the Italian scene, from veteran ...
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Reviews
Big Trouble
Dir: Barry Sonnenfeld. US. 2002. 84 mins. Delayed from last September because of its stolen bomb and plane hijacking plot points, Barry Sonnenfeld's Big Trouble arrives belatedly on US screens as a lightweight but pleasantly zany farce with a never-ending supply of gags and a more than capable ensemble cast ...
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Reviews
Food Of Love
Dir: Ventura Pons. Sp-Ger. 2002. 112mins.An absorbing tale of obsessive love, featuring nice visual exploitation by Catalan director Ventura Pons of his native Barcelona, make Food Of Love enjoyable to watch. Some audiences may be put off by Pons' theatrical style, and occasionally find some of the dialogue and ...
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Reviews
Dog Soldiers
Dir: Neil Marshall. UK. 2001. 105minsA zestful, unpretentious slab of prime British horror movie, Dog Soldiers delivers enough guts and gore to please most genre fans. Cheerfully acknowledging its limitations and influences without toppling into post-modern parody, it also has the chance of reaching a wider general audience. The mixture ...
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Reviews
Death To Smoochy
Dir: Danny DeVito. US. 2002. 109 mins. A dark, subversive comedy enthusiastically realised by some big-name Hollywood talents - most notably Robin Williams, for whom it is the first of three big-screen comeback projects - Death To Smoochy takes an amusing premise and flogs it well beyond the point of ...
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Reviews
Monsieur Batignole
Dir: Gerard Jugnot. 2002. France. 100mins.Only months after the commercial failure of Laissez Passer, Bertrand Tavernier's ambitious saga about the French film industry under the German Occupation, comes this blandly conventional feelgood comedy-drama. Gerard Jugnot's tale about an ordinary Parisian's moral resistance to wartime anti-Semitism is currently doing brisk business ...
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Reviews
Panic Room
Dir: David Fincher. US. 2002. 113minsDavid Fincher is such a technically inventive and brilliant director that, even when he tackles a genre film, like his new suspense feature The Panic Room, he elevates it with his signature flourishes way above its damsel-in-distress origins. Recalling noir films about women trapped in ...
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Reviews
Sorority Boys
Dir: Wally Wolodarsky. US. 2002. 93 mins.Combining elements of Animal House and Tootsie - considerably more of the former than the latter - Sorority Boys is a college comedy that optimistically attempts to blend social commentary with bawdy campus humour. Predictably enough, it fails to fully deliver in either department. ...
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Reviews
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversay
Dir Steven Spielberg. US. 1982. 120mins.Despite some new footage and astute digital enhancements, the 20th anniversary reissue of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg's most beloved alien fable, shows that the film is very much a product of its times, reflecting the zeitgeist and technology of 1982. That ...
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Reviews
Blade II
Dir Guillermo Del Toro. US. 2002. 117mins.Gruesome and ghastly violence, state-of-the-art special effects, fast-moving action and stylish cutting and framing can't conceal the fact that there's a big blank space at the centre of Blade II. Largely this is the fault of David Goyer's slender, meandering, and uninvolving scripting ...
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Reviews
From Nought To Ten (Dazeroadiec)
Dir: Luciano Ligabue. Italy, 2002. 100mins.Italian rockstar Luciano Ligabue rather showed up the country's army of under- achieving full-time directors when his first film, Radiofreccia, turned out to be both a critical and a commercial success. But hubris - at least on the critical front - has not been long ...