Latest – Page 708

  • Reviews

    Hush

    2001-06-28T14:07:00Z

    Dir: Ryosuke Hashiguchi. Japan. 2001. 135 mins. Hashiguchi's directorial debut, Like Grains of Sand, won prizes at Rotterdam, Dunkirk and the Turin Gay And Lesbian Festival. But it is less easy to see Hush!, his second feature, achieving the same welcome and having the same impact even on the arthouse ...

  • Reviews

    Desert Moon

    2001-06-28T14:06:00Z

    Dir:Shinji Aoyama. Japan.2001.131mins After winning the International Critics Award at Cannes last year for his remarkable Eureka, a lot was expected of Shinji Aoyama, a young director who clearly has it in him to make waves outside his home country. Perhaps too much, since Desert Moon strives too hard to ...

  • Reviews

    Crush

    2001-06-28T14:05:00Z

    Dir: John McKay. UK. 2001. 111minsA calculating mixture of hilarity and heartache, Crush is one of the more polished British candidates poised to ride the hem lines of Bridget Jones's success and exploit the expanding market for upscale chick flicks. A first feature from writer-director John McKay, it tries too ...

  • Reviews

    The Chimp

    2001-06-28T14:04:00Z

    Director: Aktan Abdykalykov. France/Kazakhstan. 2001. 98minsThe desolate Kazakhstan locale may be relatively unknown but everything else about this slight coming of age drama is wearily familiar. The concluding film in director Aktan Abdykalykov's autobiographical trilogy follows a teenage boy in the weeks leading up to his departure for military service. ...

  • Reviews

    Bride Of The Wind

    2001-06-28T12:27:00Z

    Directed by Bruce Beresford. US 2001. 99 mins.It is said that behind every successful man stands a woman. But rarely in history has one woman, Alma Mahler, stood behind so many brilliant and accomplished men. With Bride Of The Wind, Australian director Bruce Beresford (Double Jeopardy, Driving Miss Daisy) attempts ...

  • Reviews

    Baby Boy

    2001-06-27T21:09:00Z

    Dir: John Singleton. US. 2001. 130 mins.The innersoul of a young, immature black man is placed under scrutiny in JohnSingleton's Baby Boy, a companion piece but not a sequel, to his breakthrough film,Boyz N' The Hood,which exactly ten years ago made a splash in the film world. Revisiting thesame ...

  • Reviews

    Dr Dolittle 2

    2001-06-25T23:40:00Z

    Dir: Steve Carr. US. 2001. 85 mins. It's been three years since Eddie Murphy and co successfully reinvented Dr Dolittle - the man who talks to the animals - for a modern film audience by using computer effects to allow the animals to talk, cheekily, back. Dr Dolittle 2 efficiently ...

  • Reviews

    Strictly Sinatra

    2001-06-25T23:38:00Z

    Dir: Peter Capaldi. UK. 2001. 97 mins.Peter Capaldi, an actor who made award-winning short film It's A Wonderful Life, makes an assured directorial debut with this darkly comic drama which he also wrote. Boosted by appealing performances by two of Britain's finest young actors, Ian Hart and Kelly Macdonald, and ...

  • Reviews

    The Fast And The Furious

    2001-06-21T08:00:00Z

    Dir: Rob Cohen. US. 2001. 108 mins.From the first frame to the last, Rob Cohen's The Fast And The Furious is a B- movie, elevated by A-level stunt work and roaring cars that test the limit, but dragged down to C-level characterisation with a formulaic plot and schematic hero, anti-hero ...

  • Reviews

    A.I. Artificial Intelligence

    2001-06-20T22:18:00Z

    Dir: Steven Spielberg.US. 2001. 144 minAlways captivating towatch, and often emotionally touching, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: ArtificialIntelligence is one of hismost ambitious, intelligent, and problematic films, and not only due to itsvaliant effort to blend two disparate cinematic sensibilities. Easily thissummer's most eagerly awaited movie, A.I. qualifies as a media ...

  • Reviews

    'R-Xmas

    2001-06-18T05:10:00Z

    Dir: Abel Ferrara. US/France. 2000. 85 mins. It is almost as curious to find this director making a Christmas movie (though it's hardly Abel Ferrara's It's A Wonderful Life) as to see him come up with as a tale about drug dealers with an understated but undeniable Just Say No ...

  • Reviews

    Pauline & Paulette

    2001-06-18T05:08:00Z

    Dir: Lieven Debrauwer. Belgium/France/Netherlands. 2001. 78minsA bittersweet little heart-warmer on the ties that bind four sisters, Pauline & Paulette marks a promising feature debut from writer-director Lieven Debrauwer who won the Prize Du Jury at Cannes in 1997 for his short film Leonie. Lightly humorous and quietly perceptive as it ...

  • Reviews

    Martha... Martha

    2001-06-18T05:07:00Z

    Dir: Sandrine Veysset. France. 2001. 97 mins.Martha... Martha resumes many of the themes of Sandrine Veysset's previous work, in particular her first feature, Will It Snow At Christmas': deeply damaged families living on the poverty line, a mother with suicidal tendencies and, more generally, the pervasive undercurrent of emotional violence ...

  • Reviews

    Sobibor

    2001-06-18T04:55:00Z

    Dir. Claude Lanzmann, France 2001, 95 mins.A companion piece for his celebrated 1985 masterpiece Shoah, this new documentary combines material shot in 1979 but never incorporated in Claude Lanzmann's major opus, with some additional footage taken in Poland recently. Dealing with the uprising that took place at the date and ...

  • Reviews

    No Such Thing

    2001-06-18T04:54:00Z

    Dir: Hal Hartley. US 2001. 101 mins.Instead of arresting a downward spiralling career, No Such Thing, Hal Hartley's new film and latest folly, demonstrates what happens to an iconoclastic film-maker when he neglects his instinctive talent for small, quirky, offbeat films and decides to go uproariously big. Indeed, a ...

  • Reviews

    CQ

    2001-06-18T04:53:00Z

    Dir: Roman Coppola. US. 2001. 95 mins. There is a curious paradox in the idea of basing one's hero, a filmmaker trying to find himself and his own voice (the title refers to the morse code for "seek you"), on the early career of the one's own father and other ...

  • Reviews

    ABC Africa

    2001-06-18T04:50:00Z

    Dir: Abbas Kiarostami. Iran. 2001. 83 mins. Commissioned to raise international awareness of the work being done by the Uganda Women's Effort To Save Orphans (UWESO), ABC Africa is a surprisingly straightforward return to the documentary form from Palme D'Or winner Abbas Kiarostami. Largely eschewing the heartache and misery ...

  • Reviews

    Slogans

    2001-06-18T04:33:00Z

    Dir. Gjergj Xhuvani. France-Albania 2001. 90 mins.The last of the Balkan countries to rid itself of communist bliss, Albania has very good reasons to celebrate its new-found freedom of expression, as it is does here with this satire on enforced political indoctrination. Verging somewhere between realism of the kind that ...

  • Reviews

    Trouble Every Day

    2001-06-18T04:18:00Z

    Dir: Claire Denis. France. 2000. 99 mins. Claire Denis tiptoes perilously close to Golden Turkey land with this ponderous study of insatiable desire and twisted eroticism, which will command initial interest from buffs on the strength of its director's previously impressive track record (Chocolat, I Can't Sleep, Beau Travail) ...

  • Reviews

    Storytelling

    2001-06-14T12:09:00Z

    Dir: Todd Solondz. US. 2001. 87 mins.The same darkly humorous sensibility that defined Todd Solondz's earlier pictures is at work in his new satire, Storytelling, except that the novelty has worn out and the notoriously acerbic vision is now contained in a deliberately fractured narrative that leaves a lot to ...