Latest – Page 607
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Reviews
Tales From Earthsea (Gedo Senki)
Dir: Goro Miyazaki. Jap. 2006. 114mins.Hayao Miyazaki has passed the director'smantle on to his son Goro for Tales From Earthsea,Studio Ghibli's latest feature-length 2D anime. Basedon the series of books by fantasy author Ursula Le Guin,this dragon and wizard yarn is drawn - at least as far as the backdrops ...
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Reviews
The Last Kiss
Dir: Tony Goldwyn. US.2006. 105mins.A group of late twentysomethingsgingerly approaches the big 3-0 in TheLast Kiss, a tiring melodrama that coddles its immature characters.Director Tony Goldwyn has gathered an impressive cast, but Crash Oscar-winning screenwriter Paul Haggis' ponderous adaptationof the Italian hit L'Ultimo Baciostrangles the life from this ensemble picture.Starring ...
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Reviews
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Dir/scr: Jonathan Levine. US. 2006. 88mins.A quick $3.5m-$4m buy for The Weinstein Company atToronto, All TheBoys Love Mandy Lane proves to be a crisply-executed teen horror debut fromdirector Jonathan Levine and LA production outfit Occupant Films. It's likelyto be a smart buy, given that this genre, at its best, is ...
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Reviews
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Dir/scr: Jonathan Levine. US. 2006. 88mins.A quick $3.5m-$4m buy for The Weinstein Company atToronto, All TheBoys Love Mandy Lane proves to be a crisply-executed teen horror debut fromdirector Jonathan Levine and LA production outfit Occupant Films. It's likelyto be a smart buy, given that this genre, at its best, is ...
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Reviews
Breaking And Entering
Dir/scr: Anthony Minghella. UK. 2006. 119mins.Anthony Minghella's firstcontemporary London-set film since Truly MadlyDeeply in 1991, Breaking And Enteringis an ambitious but disappointing affair revolving around middle class folkfrom North London in crisis. Although handsomely produced and featuring one ortwo noteworthy performances, it is hijacked by a surprising lack ofplausibility, both ...
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Reviews
Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (Parfum: Die Geschichte Eines Morders)
Dir: Tom Tykwer. Ger-Fr-Sp. 2006. 140mins.Tom Tykwer pulls out allthe stops with his sumptuous English-language adaptation of Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume,making for a daring and imposing achievement that is likely to leave audiencesstunned and somewhat exhausted rather than truly dazzled.With its dark tone, wilfullymorbid subject matter and antipathetic protagonist, it ...
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Reviews
Black Sheep
Dir/scr: Jonathan King. NZ. 2006. 87mins.A canny mix of splatter-movie aesthetics, nationaldread and ecological warning, Jonathan King's debut feature Black Sheep is a riotously funny,gleefully overdone horror exercise that more than hints at the influence of earlyPeter Jackson like Meet The Feebles, Braindead and BadTaste.Swift andentertaining, though at times too ...
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Reviews
Bugmaster
Dir: Katsuhiro Otomo. Jap-US. 2006. 130mins.Japanese anime director Katsuhiro Otomomakes a curiously subdued, poetic foray into live-action cinema with his latestfeature, Bugmaster.Though the story's setting in the late Meiji era and its "invisible bug"infestation theme initially suggest a period horror along the lines of ShinyaTsukamoto's Gemini, the meditativepace, lonely but ...
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Reviews
10 Items Or Less
Dir/scr: Brad Silberling. US. 2006. 82mins.The unpredictable career of Brad Silberlingtakes another left turn after the big budget spectacle of Lemony Snicket's A SeriesOf Unfortunate Events (2004) with his new feature 10 Items Or Less. More of a character-basedchamber piece than anything else, this virtual two-hander finds thewriter-director straying into ...
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Reviews
Antonia
Dir: Tata Amaral. Br. 2006. 90mins.The third feature from film-maker TataAmaral, Antoniatakes a well-sung genre - the rap group from the wrong side of the tracks whotry to make it big in the face of ruptured friendships - and gives it theunique flavour of a Sao Paolo favela.It is further ...
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Reviews
The Missing Star (La Stella Che Non C'e)
Dir: Gianni Amelio. It-Fr-Switz. 2006. 107mins.Gianni Amelio treads waterwith The Missing Star, an anti-hero quest moviethat has moments of emotional engagement but is marred by its genrefence-sitting and the muddiness of its final message. It's one of those filmswhose fascination lies not so much in the drama, whichis structured like ...
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Reviews
Rob-B-Hood
Dir: Benny Chan. HK-Chi. 2006. 135mins.Jackie Chan returns to the broad Hong Kong comedyaction of earlier films like Meals On Wheels with the enjoyably ramshackle, fast-pacedbabysitting-crook yarn Rob-B-Hood.Laced with some classic stunts - a couple of them as inventive as anything Chanhas ever done - and action set-pieces, and canny ...
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Reviews
For Your Consideration
Dir: Christopher Guest. US.2006. 86mins.The finest comedy stems from painfully truthful,accurate reflections of real life. That may explain why Christopher Guest'ssharply observed ensemble comedies have become such surefire guarantees ofhilarity. For Your Consideration isno exception as it captures all the inanity and indignity of the Hollywood Oscar season.Filled with quotable ...
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Reviews
Catch A Fire
Dir: Phillip Noyce. UK-S Afr-US. 2006. 98minsThe desperate struggles against the apartheid regimein South Africa have inspired a distinguished body of cinema that stretches from Cry Freedom (1987) to Red Dust (2004). Phillip Noyce's Catch A Fire tells of Patrick Chamussoand his journey from acquiescent model citizen to radicalisedfreedom fighter ...
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Reviews
A Good Year
Dir: Ridley Scott. U.S. 2006. 118mins.Ridley Scott's A Good Year, whichre-teams the director with Russell Crowe, should have been an easily likeableand amiable romantic comedy, adapted from the same-name novel by Peter Mayle, who has had a huge following since his 1989 memoir A Year In Provence.But this tale of ...
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Reviews
All The King's Men
Dir: Steven Zaillian. US. 2006. 125mins.The queasy compromises of love, loyalty and bareknuckle politics are at the heart of a handsome, star-studded new version ofthe Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All The King's Men. The celebrated 1949 adaptation of theRobert Warren Penn epic is probably best remembered for Broderick Crawford's Oscar-winningperformance as ...
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Reviews
Golden Door (Nuovomondo)
Dir/scr: Emanuele Crialese. Fr-It. 2006. 118mins.A moving but unsentimental film of mythic resonance aboutthe early years of mass Italian immigration to the United States, The Golden Door consecrates Sicilian directorEmanuele Crialese as a film-makerof global significance after his promising earlier features, Once We Were Strangers (1997) and Respiro (2002). Turningthe ...
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Reviews
Penelope
Dir: Mark Palansky. UK.2006. 101minsMore of anexaggerated pantomime than a lyrical fable, Penelopestruggles to find the magical qualities that seemed to arise so effortlessly inEdward Scissorhandsor Amelie.The tale of a pig-faced girl's search for love and happiness is sweetly toldbut too often plays for easy laughs rather that true wonderment ...
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Reviews
Hana
Dir: Hirokazu Kore-Eda. Jap. 2006. 127mins.Rambling, overlong and at times even messy, Hana isnevertheless a delightful surprise from well known Japanese director Hirokazu Kor-Eda. Alwaysidentified in the past with slow, reflective, sad pieces such as Maborosi and philosophicalreflections on human existence like Afterlife- not to mention the heartbreaking NobodyKnows, one ...