Latest – Page 586
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Reviews
The Champagne Spy (Meragel Hashampaniya)
Dir. Nadav Schirman. Is. 2007. 90mins.If the first requisite for a good documentary is a darn good yarn, then Nadav Schirman couldn't have asked for anything better than with The Champagne Spy, a tale of intrigue, espionage, love, betrayal, glamour and misery based on a true story that is begging ...
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Reviews
Conversation With My Gardener (Dialogue Avec Mon Jardinier)
Dir. Jean Becker. France, 2007. 109mins.A pleasant talkathon featuring a successful painter relocating to the country estate of his late parents and the gardener he hires, Conversation With My Gardener is the kind of film that veteran director Jean Becker should be capable of directing with one hand tied behind ...
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Reviews
Licence To Wed
Dir: Ken Kwapis. US. 2007. 90mins.Two up-and-coming stars get left at the cinematic altar in License To Wed, a badly strained romantic comedy with enough plot contrivances to fill a reception hall. In a supporting role, Robin Williams delivers a (relatively) toned-down performance, but this bit of summer counter-programming lacks ...
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Reviews
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Dir: David Yates. US/UK. 2007. 138 mins.The choice of celebrated UK TV director David Yates to take on the fifth in the Harry Potter series proved a wise one for producer David Heyman and Warner Bros. Yates ramps up the adrenalin and menace while adding new layers of emotional anguish ...
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Reviews
Kings
Dir: Tom Collins. Ire-UK. 91mins.A melancholy drama of Irish displacement, Kings has 'based on a stage play' written all over it. Not only in a negative sense: this study of the unfulfilled hopes, dreams and promises of five friends who moved to London from the west of Ireland years before ...
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Reviews
Kremen
Dir: Aleksei Mizgiryov. Russ. 2007. 83mins.Perhaps the Taormina festival catalogue errs a little on the side of enthusiasm in comparing Aleksei Mizgiryov's debut feature Kremen to Taxi Driver. But there is something in the claim: like Scorsese's classic, this is a tale of a disturbed, asocial innocent with a rigid ...
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Reviews
Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free Or Die Hard)
Dir: Len Wiseman. US. 2007. 129mins'You're a Timex watch in a digital age'. So says the smooth master criminal pitted against Bruce Willis' action-hero cop John McClane in Die Hard 4.0 (known as Live Free Or Die Hard in the US), the much anticipated fourth instalment of the franchise. The ...
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Reviews
Man Of Glass (Uomo Di Vetro)
Dir: Stefano Incerti. It. 2007. 96mins.A worthy addition to the modern canon of Italian mafia films, Man Of Glass tells the true story of Leonardo Vitale, the first Sicilian mafioso to turn state's evidence and reveal the inner workings of the powerful Palermo branch of Cosa Nostra. Like The Hundred ...
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Reviews
Talk To Me
Dir: Kasi Lemons. US. 2007. 115mins.A tasty performance by Don Cheadle and a nice evocation of late-sixties black America are the heart and soul of Talk To Me, director Kasi Lemmons' enjoyable period drama about real-life Washington DC deejay-activist Petey Greene Jr. The Sidney Kimmel Entertainment production could prove a ...
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Reviews
Captivity
Dir: Roland Joffe. US. 2007. 84 minsThe controversy surrounding the marketing of Captivity proves to be more interesting than the film itself. Banned American billboard images considered too intense for public display earned Captivity the kind of notoriety that publicity budgets cannot buy. Anyone seduced by the whiff of scandal ...
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Reviews
Transformers
Dir: Michael Bay. US. 2007. 142mins.Director Michael Bay delivers another stylishly shot, escapist movie gumball with Transformers, an orgiastic action extravaganza based on Hasbro's line of convertible kids' action toys. Some likeable characters and early, intriguingly seeded plot strands of clandestine overlap are sacrificed at the altar of expediency and ...
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Reviews
1408
Dir: Mikael Hafstrom. US. 2007. 94mins.Pitched as summer counter-programming but arriving in the midst of a glut of underperforming horror releases, 1408 is a spooky Stephen King adaptation given an extra touch of class by leads John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson and Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom.The Dimension Films chiller ...
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Reviews
Evan Almighty
Dir: Tom Shadyac. US. 2007. 96mins.Borrowing liberally from Field Of Dreams in addition to its previous swipes from Oh, God!, Evan Almighty is an ungainly melding of religious paean, big-budget studio comedy, and summer-blockbuster spectacle. Taking over for Bruce Almighty star Jim Carrey, Steve Carell proves to be a difficult ...
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Reviews
Evening
Dir. Lajos Koltai. US. 2007. 117mins.In Evening, director Lajos Koltai makes his English-language feature debut with an earnest adaptation of Susan Minot's successful novel about a dying woman looking back at the love of her youth. With a dream-team cast of actresses - Vanessa Redgrave, Clare Danes, Meryl Streep, Natascha ...
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Reviews
Billy The Kid
Dir. Jennifer Venditti. US. 2007. 85mins.Billy The Kid ventures into a small, contained community to focus on a single life and thereby turns the camera on the world. The Grand Prize winner at SXSW in Austin, where it premiered in March, and an audience favourite at Hot Docs in Toronto, ...
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Reviews
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Dir: Tim Story. US. 2007. 92mins.The sequel to unexpected summer 2005 smash Fantastic Four adds a major new Marvel character to the action and aims for a broader audience with a slightly younger skew than the first film. In essence, though, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is the ...
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Reviews
Inside (A l'Interieur)
Dirs: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo. Fr. 2007. 80mins.Imagine a graphic, feature-length riff on that line in Macbeth about Macduff being 'from his mother's womb untimely ripped' and you have the kernel of Inside, a vicious gore-fest, which seems designed to prove that Europeans too can up the horror stakes too ...
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Reviews
Hostel: Part II
Dir: Eli Roth. US. 2007. 94mins. Two significant story changes notwithstanding, Hostel: Part II stays close to the first film's successful strategy of mixing unsuspecting American tourists with sadistic Eastern Europeans. Writer-director Eli Roth tries to enliven the formula by switching the genders of his victims and by offering an ...