Latest – Page 593
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Reviews
The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair
Dir: Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein. US, 2007. 72 minutes. Shown in the Spotlight Premieres section of SXSW Festival, The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is a powerfully moving documentary about one Iraqi man's mistreatment at the hands of the US military in that infamous hellhole ...
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Reviews
Suffering Man's Charity
Dir: Alan Cumming. USA. 2007. 92 mins Suffering Man's Charity is one of those films that attempts to hide humourless and cruelty behind the generic label 'black comedy'. Instead of being funny, it is rather a relentless harangue, an assault of over-the-top acting that attempts to disguise or make up ...
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Reviews
Premonition
Dir: Mennan Yapo. US. 2007. 97mins. Unconvincingly folding together domestic drama with time-bending suspense and personal-stakes analytical thrills, Premonition represents Sandra Bullock's worst starring vehicle in a decade. Spare in design, detail and cogent thought, the film is a mock investigative thriller which unfolds over the course of one jumbled ...
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Reviews
Knocked Up
Dir/scr: Judd Apatow. US, 2007. 126 mins. In 2005, Judd Apatow scored big with the surprise hit, The 40-Year Old Virgin, which, with its novel combination of gross-out elements and old-fashioned, recognisably human emotion, earned critical plaudits and went on to do some $177m box-office world-wide. With his new film, ...
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Reviews
Sisters
Dir: Douglas Buck. US. 2007. 92 mins.When will filmmakers ever learn how risky it is to re-make a classic, especially when it's in the same language' Does it take a special form of hubristic death-wish to deliberately invite comparisons between your film and that of an acknowledged master of horror ...
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Reviews
Flakes
Dir: Michael Lehmann. US. 2007. 83 mins. Flakes starts well and full of pep, but is one of those 'high concept' indie films that fatally loses steam after the first 20 minutes, once the basic premise - dueling cereal restaurants, one a laid-back, funky hippie operation and the other an ...
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Reviews
The Lookout
Dir/Scr: Scott Frank. US. 2007. 99 mins. Opening Night Film at the SXSW Film Festival, The Lookout is the directorial debut of Oscar-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank (Out Of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report, The Interpreter and Little Man Tate). A somewhat uneven, but always engaging film, The Lookout is set ...
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Reviews
I Think I Love My Wife
Dir: Chris Rock. US. 2007. 94mins. It sounds like a joke: comedian Chris Rock and Louis CK, with who he collaborated on his edgy 1990s HBO TV series, working together again on an adaptation of Eric Rohmer's Chloe In The Afternoon. The laughs sound even more pronounced given that they ...
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Reviews
Becoming Jane
Dir: Julian Jarrold. UK-US. 2007. 120mins Fact proves just as charming as fiction in Becoming Jane, a beautifully crafted biography of Jane Austen that will hold an irresistible appeal to global audiences who swooned over big screen adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Sense & Sensibility (1995). Charting the ...
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Reviews
Gone (aka Middle Of Nowhere)
Dir: Ringan Ledwidge. UK-Aust. 2006. 88mins Young British travellers should steer well clear of the Australian Outback. Having suffered at the hands of a deranged and sadistic bushman in Greg McLean's ferociously unpleasant Wolf Creek, the Brits Down Under are again put through the wringer in Gone. Like Wolf Creek, ...
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Reviews
Dr Plonk
Dir/scr: Rolf De Heer. Aust. 2007. 84mins Rolf De Heer, perhaps relaxing from the extreme directorial hardships of last year's Ten Canoes and the grim themes of The Tracker (2002) and Alexandra's Project (2003), has with Dr Plonk produced a featherweight comic curiosity. The result is a silent, monochromatic, fixed-camera ...
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Reviews
Men In The Nude (Ferfiakt)
Dir/scr: Karoly Esztergalyos. Hung. 2006. 94mins. A gay affair between an aging writer and a streetwise hustler who exploits him, Men In The Nude is a midlife crisis drama that seems tailored for the gay market but is not quite certain how comfortably it will fit in this niche. Old-fashioned ...
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Reviews
The Lark Farm (La Masseria Delle Allodole)
Dirs: Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani. It-Bul-Sp-Fr. 2007. 117mins. It's a shame that the first straight historical feature to deal with the Armenian genocide of 1915 is such a poor film. The theme (already dealt with in several documentaries and Atom Egoyan's tricksy Ararat) deserves a better platform than this melodrama ...
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Reviews
Iska's Journey (Iszka Utazasa)
Dir/scr: Csaba Bollok. Hung. 2007. 94mins.Built around the innocently luminous face of Maria Varga, Csaba Bollok's drama Iska's Journey often has the weight of a painful, heartbreaking documentary. While some of the last act scripting tends to mar the earlier authenticity, it is still powerful enough to justify its Berlin ...
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Reviews
Celebration
Dir: Olivier Meyrou. Fr. 2007. 74mins. A fashion-world documentary resolutely stripped of frills, Olivier Meyrou's Celebration is a portrait of haute couture legend Yves Saint-Laurent unplugged, as it were - some might even say, unstitched. Perhaps too distant from its subject to qualify exactly as a warts-and-all portrait, Meyrou's film ...
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Reviews
Happy New Life (Boldog Uj Elet)
Dir/scr: Arpad Bogdan. Hung. 2007. 81mins There is nothing happy, little new and almost no life in Arpad Bogdan's debut feature Happy New Life. A moody piece shot mostly in saturated colours, with sporadic flashbacks in lighter tones, it showcases a distinct visual talent, a strong tendency for use of ...
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Reviews
Goodbye, Southern City (Proschai, Yuzhnyi Gorod)
Dir: Oleg Safaraliyev. Azer-Russ. 2007. 90mins. Enjoying plenty of local colour but little else, Goodbye, Southern City, a modest Azeri film noir shot entirely in Baku, will be limited to those interested in the region or expatriates. For others it will look like a sincere, heartfelt but misguided elegy of ...
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Reviews
Ad Lib Night (Aju Teukbyeolhan Sonnim)
Dir: Lee Yoon-ki. S Kor. 2006. 99mins. Korean film-maker Lee Yoon-ki seems obsessed with female solitude and dysfunctional families. After This Charming Girl and Love Talk, he revisists the theme with Ad Lib Night, a film shot so much in close-ups that it could have been made anywhere, so little ...
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Reviews
Opium: Diary Of A Madwoman (Opium: Egy Elmebeteg No Naploja)
Dir. Janos Szasz. Hung-Ger. 2007. 108mins. A decade after the adaptation of The Wittman Boys (1997) which delved with a vengeance into the evil lurking behind childhood innocence, Janos Szasz goes back to the diaries of same writer, Geza Csath, and comes up with the cinematic equivalent of an Edgar ...
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Reviews
Confession Of Pain (Seung sing)
Dirs: Andrew Lau, Alan Mak. HK. 2006. 116mins. The Infernal Affairs trilogy - and Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake, The Departed - turned Andrew Lau and Alan Mak into the golden boys of Hong Kong cinema. The directing duo followed up with the enjoyably lightweight teen racer yarn Initial D, which ...