Latest – Page 590
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Reviews
Flight Of The Red Balloon (Le Voyage Du Ballon Rouge)
Ostensibly an homage to the fifty years old classic The Red Balloon, this is the kind of tribute that only Hou Hsiao Hsien would devise for his first fully French-speaking and produced picture. Albert Lamorisse's lyrical, dialogue-less half hour survey of Paris in the fifties, in which the director followed ...
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Reviews
4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile)
Dir: Cristian Mungiu. Rom. 2007. 113 minsA deceptively simple tale carrying a tremendous wallop, Cristian Mungiu's third feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days leads the new Romanian cinema into this year's Cannes competition with flying colours. The market may not be bowled over at first sight - after ...
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Reviews
My Blueberry Nights
Dir: Wong Kar Wai. 2007. US. 111mins Life is as plaintive and banal as a country western ballad in My Blueberry Nights. Wong Kar Wai's English-language debut may have all the trappings of an American road movie but at the core it is a characteristically dreamy exploration of love, loss ...
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Reviews
Georgia Rule
Dir: Garry Marshall. US. 2007. 111mins.Georgia Rule is a comedy about women that comes with stars and a mighty promise -that honesty and humor can heal the most bitter rifts that fray mother-daughter bonds over three generations. The film, written and directed by men, aims at a trans-generational market of ...
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Reviews
West 32nd
Dir: Michael Kang. US. 2007. 83mins. Michael Kang's second feature West 32nd is an ambitious thriller set in the Korean underworld of Manhattan. While rich in atmosphere and a set-up which promises to peel the layers off a sinister world of crime, it ultimately promises more intrigue and complexity than ...
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Reviews
Rise: Blood Hunter
Dir: Sebastian Gutierrez. US. 2007. 94mins.A genre thriller without much of a bite, Rise: Blood Hunter is nevertheless a well-mounted affair with a sense of humour and a solid starring turn by Lucy Liu as a woman who finds herself among the living dead. Premiered at Tribeca recently and opening ...
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Reviews
Shrek The Third
Dir: Chris Miller. US. 2007. 92mins. The 'greatest fairy tale never told' (as the original tag line put it) is missing a bit of its magic in this, the DreamWorks Animation CG fable about the big green ogre and his oddly familiar friends. With a new director and writers but ...
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Reviews
28 Weeks Later
Dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. UK-US-Sp. 2007. 100mins. 28 Weeks Later is superior genre fare, directed and performed with such gusto that you scarcely notice its creaks. Atmospheric and creepy production design, excellent use of London locations and a succession of bloodcurdling chase sequences keep the tempo high, even as the ...
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Reviews
The Matrimony (Xin Zhong You Gui)
Dir: Teng Huatao. Chi. 2007. 90mins.Produced by the brothers Wang - China's answer to the Weinsteins - and released in Mainland China on Valentine's Day, The Matrimony was just pipped to the post by Li Shaohong's The Door (which hit cinemas on 18 January) for the title of 'China's first ...
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Reviews
You Kill Me
Dir: John Dahl. US. 2007. 90mins. A return to form of sorts for John Dahl after his epic World War Two flop The Great Raid, You Kill Me is a short, sharp, mordant little mob comedy about a Buffalo hitman on hiaitus from killing in San Francisco and trying to ...
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Reviews
Charlie Bartlett
Dir: Jon Poll. US. 2007. 97mins.Jon Poll, an established editor with credits including the Austin Powers and Meet The Parents films, makes a commendable directorial debut with Charlie Bartlett, a high-school comedy which sits in the same class of wry, deadpan movies as Rushmore, Election and Saved!. Sunnier and more ...
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Reviews
We Are Together (Thina Simunye)
Dir. Paul Taylor. UK. 2006. 86minsThe young singers in We Are Together (Thina Simunye) are some of the estimated 1.2m orphans in South Africa today, most of whom lost their parents to AIDS-related illnesses. The motivational documentary by Paul Taylor observed them singing and struggling over three years. The themes ...
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Reviews
Where God Left His Shoes
Dir: Salvatore Stabile. US. 2007. 99mins.There's no question that Where God Left His Shoes contains its fair share of cliches; it also skirts dangerously close to sentimentality. But writer/producer/director Salvatore Stabile, who made his debut feature Gravesend when he was just 19, keeps his second film on track and ultimately ...
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Reviews
Lovesickness (Maldeamores)
Dir: Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz. Puerto Rico. 2007. 90mins.A bright new talent emerges from Puerto Rico in writer/director Carlitos Ruiz Ruiz, whose debut feature Maldeamores (aka Lovesickness) is a warm-hearted and witty tryptych of stories about the dysfunctions and masochism of love. The film had a strong reception at its Tribeca ...
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Reviews
The Workshop
Dir: Jamie Morgan. UK. 2007. 93mins.One of the most talked about films at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, UK documentary The Workshop from first-time film-maker Jamie Morgan is a personal hand-held record of a ten-day workshop Morgan took with 'guru' Paul Lowe in northern California. While hardly the most technically ...
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Reviews
Watching The Detectives
Dir: Paul Soter. US. 2007. 91mins. Watching The Detectives, Paul Soter's feature debut, is intended to be a cinephile's movie, a geek cinephile's movie, where the hapless proprietor of video store and slacker haven is seduced by a femme fatale who walks in off the street. The tale than unfolds ...
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Reviews
The Air I Breathe
Dir: Jieho Lee. US. 2007. 97mins.In his debut feature, The Air I Breathe, Jieho Lee turns a Chinese proverb into a story that explores the interlocking fates of four characters, all of whom all are trapped in the grip, literally, of a violent gangster boss called Fingers. The gangster drama ...
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Reviews
My Father, My Lord (Hofshat Kaits)
Dir. David Volach. Is. 2006. 72mins. Even the top drama award at Tribeca can't make My Father, My Lord, David Volach's debut feature, into a crowd pleaser - but then again, it was never meant to. An intimate chamber piece, requiring its audience to interpret the apparently banal images into ...
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Reviews
The Grand
Dir: Zak Penn. US. 2006. 95minsIf you hesitated to believe that gambling casinos were a magnet for misfits, The Grand, an improvised ensemble comedy set at a high-stakes poker tournament in Las Vegas, will confirm that impression. Zak Penn's new film is a high-stakes vaudeville Love Boat with more stars ...