Latest – Page 631
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Reviews
Everlasting Regret (Changhen ge)
Dir: Stanley Kwan.Chi-HK. 2005. 115mins.With EverlastingRegret, Stanley Kwan delivers a women's film par excellence; the kind thatfilm-makers such as Douglas Sirk loved to spin out and that Kwan himself hassuccessfully proved adept at in the past.A sprawling, melancholystory about unrequited love adapted from one of modern China's most successfulnovels, it ...
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Reviews
Imagine Me And You
Dir/scr: Ol Parker.UK-Ger. 2005. 93minsOl Parker ventures intoRichard Curtis territory for his directorial debut Imagine You And Me, apleasant romantic comedy that often appears torn between its more soulful, reflectiveinstincts and the lure of following the crowd-pleasing Curtis formula. Theformula generally wins even if the mismatched lovers on this occasion ...
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Reviews
Revolver
Dir/scr: Guy Ritchie. Fr-UK. 2005. 110mins.After the fiasco of Swept Away there wasnowhere to go but up for writer/director Guy Ritchie. Retreating to the safeterritory of gangland squabbles, dirty deeds, diamond geezers and hardcoreviolence must have seemed like a good idea but Revolver is such aconvoluted, risibly overwrought muddle of ...
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Reviews
Oliver Twist
Dir: Roman Polanski.Fr-UK-Czech Rep. 2005. 128mins.Roman Polanski made thisnew version of Oliver Twist for his children, but it's hard to imaginekids anywhere warming to his austere, colourless treatment of the story.Oliver Twist here evokes both Polanski's traumatic childhood andthe Wladyslaw Szpilman character in The Pianist - a blameless humandesperate to ...
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Reviews
Tideland
Dir: Terry Gilliam. UK-Can.2005. 121mins.Terry Gilliam has spent hisentire career celebrating the power of the imagination to transcend the awfulrealities of life and death. He has described Mitch Cullin's Tideland as"Alice In Wonderland meets Psycho" and it sounds like idealmaterial for him.Unfortunately, thismacabre, longwinded fantasy is closer in tone to ...
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Reviews
Breakfast On Pluto
Dir: Neil Jordan. Ire-UK. 2005. 135mins.Neil Jordan comes over all Almodovar in BreakfastOn Pluto, a sprawling, picaresque account of a young transvestite's epicodyssey in search of his mother. Jordan has a patchy record with broad comicmaterial (High Spirits, We're No Angels etc) and this reunionwith Butcher Boy writer Patrick McCabe ...
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Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
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Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
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Reviews
Romance & Cigarettes
Dir/scr:John Turturro. US. 2005. 106mins.After the first song-and-dance number of John Turturro'sstar-peppered blue collar musical, the Venice press corps broke into loud,spontaneous applause. When the second ended, there was a more subdued ripple.By the time the third came along, the excitement had died down, and thegood-natured, foot-tapping, flawed nature of ...
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Reviews
Goal!
Dir: Danny Cannon. UK.2005 110minsGoal! is the first episode in a planned football trilogyabout a 19-year-old Latino Santiago plucked from LA to play in the EnglishPremiership. The second film - to be shot by House Of Wax director JaumeCollet Serra from next month - will see him play on a ...
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Reviews
Elizabethtown
Dir/scr:Cameron Crowe. US. 2005. 138mins.Aromantic comedy for the MTV generation with some of that old Kentucky magicthrown in for the oldies, Elizabethtown illustrates the dangers of goingstraight for the feelgood jugular. Feelgood has to be earned. So do the last 48minutes of a 138-minute film. And the overlong Elizabethtown has ...
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Reviews
Elizabethtown
Dir/scr:Cameron Crowe. US. 2005. 138mins.Aromantic comedy for the MTV generation with some of that old Kentucky magicthrown in for the oldies, Elizabethtown illustrates the dangers of goingstraight for the feelgood jugular. Feelgood has to be earned. So do the last 48minutes of a 138-minute film. And the overlong Elizabethtown has ...
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Reviews
Bubble
Dir: Steven Soderbergh.US. 2005. 73mins.Soderbergh goes back tobasics. Not in the tricksy, star-stuffed mode of Full Frontal or Schizopolis:in Bubble the basics are the ones that really matter. A strong storylineand good dramatic structure give this quirky tragic love triangle a grip on theaudience; and a certain edgy eccentricity in ...
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Reviews
Corpse Bride
Dirs:Mike Johnson, Tim Burton. UK. 2005. 75mins.Thefirst stop-motion feature directed (in part) by Tim Burton - he produced andwrote The Nightmare Before Christmas - Corpse Bride brings theHollywood fantasist's dark and fertile imagination to bear on a hugelyentertaining macabre love story.Likethe two Shrek movies, the film has a fairytale backbone ...
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Reviews
Proof
Dir:John Madden. US-UK. 2005. 100mins.Anefficient drama, rather than a memorable one, John Madden's Proofbenefits, for once, from its theatrical origins. Madden directed GwynethPaltrow in the main role of David Auburn's stage play at the Donmar Warehousein London, and the familiarity of both director and actress with the materialcomes through in ...
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Reviews
Casanova
Dir: Lasse Hallstrom. US.2005. 112mins.There's somethingold-fashioned about Lasse Hallstrom's take on the 18-century Venetian rake andwomaniser Giacomo Casanova; but also something disarmingly likeable.It's as if the spirit of Richard Lester, circa The Three Musketeers, had takenpossession of the Swedish director.Hallstrom is helped by ascript fizzing with brio and by the ...
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Reviews
Persona Non Grata
Dir/scr:Krzysztof Zanussi. Pol-Russ-It. 2005. 117mins.Krzysztof Zanussimakes films for mature specialised audiences, interested in human nature andethical standards rather than in plots, heroes and villains. If this dooms himto a small, appreciative cinema-going crowd and to selective festivals (likehis competition slot in Venice), then so be it. He has never appeared ...
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Reviews
Gabrielle
Dir: PatriceChereau. Fr-It. 2005.90mins.An analytical butstrangely alienated portrait of a 10 year-old marriage gone sour, PatriceChereau's latest feature is impressive on many counts but falls short ofdelivering the emotional wallop it seems to hanker for.Expanding on JosephConrad's novella The Return to show both viewpoints in a marital crisis,Chereau delivers an ...
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Reviews
The Exorcism Of Emily Rose
Dir: Scott Derrickson.US. 2005. 118minsAn interesting but unresolved hybrid of metaphysical horror film andcourtroom drama, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose takes the true story of agirl who died in Germany following an apparent case of demonic possession, andtransplants it to small-town America.Billed as the firstauthentic film treatment of demonic possession, ...
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Reviews
Everything Is Illuminated
Dir: Liev Schreiber. US.2005. 102mins.The fine US actor LievSchreiber makes his directorial debut on his own ambitious adaptation of whatis perhaps an unfilmable book - Jonathan Safran Foer's brilliant first novel EverythingIs Illuminated. It's a brave attempt, but only partially successful, andcritics will compare it unfavourably with the very recent ...