Latest – Page 651
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Reviews
Ladder 49
Dir:Jay Russell. US. 2004. 115mins.America'spost-September 11 love affair with the figure of the heroic firefighter getsthe big screen treatment in Ladder 49, a character-driven action dramapairing a boyish Joaquin Phoenix with a fatherly John Travolta. The pairingworks well enough and the drama is sensitively handled by director Jay Russell(My Dog ...
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Reviews
Crash
Dir:Paul Haggis. US. 2004. 100mins.Whilethe mini-genre it occupies - multi-storylined ensemble pieces aboutdysfunctional life in southern California - is already well-established (see ShortCuts, Magnolia), Crash is a superb, sometimes literallybreath-taking new addition to this august group.First-timefeature director Paul Haggis (a native of Canada who has lived in Los Angelesfor a ...
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Reviews
Three Extremes
Dirs: Fruit Chan, ParkChan-Wook, Takashi Miike. HK-Jap-S Kor. 2004. 127mins.The second of twothree-part omnibus films at this year's Venice Film Festival (the other was theWong Kar-Wai/Soderbergh/Antonioni collaboration Eros), Three Extremes is a tasty showpiece forthree of Asia's hottest directors. In market terms, they are a well-chosen trio- far more so ...
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Reviews
Turtles Can Fly (Lakposhtha Ham Parvaz Mikonand)
Dir/scr:Bahman Ghobadi. Iran-Iraq, 2004. 95mins.Fouryears after he first emerged on the international scene, first as an actor inSamira Makhmablaf's Blackboards, then as director of A Time ForDrunken Horses, Bahman Ghobadi returns with Turtles Can Fly.Thestory is again located in Ghobadi's native Kurdistan and deals once more withthe tragic misery of ...
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Reviews
Brothers (Brodre)
Dir: Susanne Bier. Den. 2004. 110minsThe consequences of love and the personal trauma ofglobal conflict prove a potent combination in Brothers. The latestcollaboration between Open Hearts director Susanne Bier and screenwriterAnders Thomas Jensen takes the stuff of cheap melodrama and transforms it intoa heartfelt human drama.Once again their collaboration is ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark To Finish
Dir/scr:Peter Greenaway. Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2004. 120mins.Youmay, to paraphrase a football commentator, have thought it was all over. Wellit is now. The final part of Peter Greenaway's seven-hour Tulse Luperopus, From Sark To Finish, unrolled at the Venice Film Festival. Itssubdued reception came as a marked contrast to the anticipatory buzz that ...
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Reviews
The Forgotten
Dir:Joseph Ruben. US. 2004. 90mins.Itstarts out feeling like a slightly soppy episode of The X-Files, withmotherly love replacing paranoia as the driving emotion. But teasing thriller TheForgotten gets perked up by a handful of judiciously used special effectsand a sense of mystery that could be described as Shyamalan-esque (as in ...
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Reviews
Bombon El Perro
Dir. CarlosSorin. Arg-Sp. 2004. 96mins.As spare,intimate and intentionally unglamorous as Carlos Sorin's previous film MinimalStories, Bombon, El Perro is likely to follow a similar fate: rakingin a bagful of festival awards, collecting plenty of favourable reviews andgenerating better than average business on the arthouse circuit.The film won theFIPRESCI award at ...
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Reviews
Kung Fu Hustle (Gungfu)
Dir: Stephen Chow. HK-Chi. 2004. 95minsThe martial arts film to end all martial arts films, Kung FuHustle makes Kill Bill look like a playground scuffle. StephenChow's affectionate salute to the era of Bruce Lee and the Shaw Brothers is ajaw-dropping mixture of blistering fight sequences, slapstick sadism anddelirious black comedy.Action ...
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Reviews
Vital
Dir/scr/cine/prod des/ed:Shinya Tsukamoto. Japan. 2004. 86mins.Tsukamoto is one of those directors whose name on the opening credits is alwaysgreeted with applause by festival junkies. A one-man band who hates to delegateany of the headline technical jobs, Tsukamoto will probably never break out ofthe cult ghetto, unlike his Japanese compatriots, Takeshi ...
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Reviews
Imaginary Heroes
Dir/scr: DanHarris. US. 2004. 112minsThe great soap opera of life is revisited once again in Imaginary Heroes,an entertaining but superficial tug at the heartstrings. The directorial debutof X-Men 2 screenwriter Dan Harris picks at the scabs of a family'semotional wounds to reveal a considerable collection of guilty secrets anddamaging deceptions.Superioracting ...
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Reviews
The Intruder
Dir: Claire Denis. Fr.2004. 130mins."Impenetrable" would be a generous way of describing French auteur ClaireDenis' latest feature; adjectives like "self-indulgent" and "dull" might occurto the less well-disposed critic.Not that this film is devoidof moments of visual poetry and - at least in the early stages - plot tension.But its wilful ...
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Reviews
Eros
Dir/scr: Wong Kar Wai,Steven Soderbergh Michelangelo Antonioni (screenplay with Tonino Guerra).Fr-It-Lux. 2004. 108 mins."I wanted my name on aposter with Michelangelo Antonioni," is Steven Soderbergh's stated reason forcoming on board the three-part portmanteau film Eros. Having seen thefilm, one wonders if Soderbergh will now be asking distributors to take hisname ...
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Reviews
Undertow
Dir. David Gordon Green. US. 2004. 107mins.An intoxicating auteur spin on Southern Gothic, Undertow is a conventional adventurestory - good boys, bad uncle, hidden gold - that is told in a mostunconventional way. To say its his most commercial film yet isn't saying much,as the qualities that make it a ...
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Reviews
Hotel Rwanda
Dir: Terry George. 2004.S Afr-UK-It. 122mins.Terry George's gripping,fact-based Hotel Rwanda brings to mind both The Killing Fieldsand Schindler's List, but its low-key approach means it is unlikely tobecome as commercially successful as those two titles. That said, it did winthe Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival at the ...
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Reviews
Sideways
Dir: Alexander Payne. US.2004. 124 mins.Alexander Payne entersthe very top rank of American auteurs with his fourth film Sideways, ablissfully enjoyable meditation on masculinity and loneliness which willdelight adult audiences and should be a significant contender in theend-of-year awards race. Fox Searchlight Pictures, which fully financed thefilm, is releasing it ...
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Reviews
Wimbledon
Richard Loncraine, UK/US 2004, 97 minsRichard Curtis maynot have written Wimbledon but hisinfluence is evident in almost every scene of the film. As in Notting Hill and Four Weddings, a charming but stuttering Brit (in this case, ajourneyman tennis player) falls in love with a tougher, more worldly wiseAmerican. We're ...
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Reviews
Melinda And Melinda
Dir: Woody Allen, US2004. 99 mins After a run of lightweight comedies that caused evenhardcore supporters to lose patience, Woody Allen achieves a heartening returnto form with his most idiosyncratic and substantial film in some time. Agenuine tragi-comedy - in that it counterpoints two parallel stories, tragicand comic - Melinda ...
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Reviews
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow
Dir:Kerry Conran. US. 2004. 106mins.Thespirit and look of vintage science fiction meets the digital technology ofscience fact in Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow, an eccentricallyretro-futuristic adventure whose live actors appear in a world almost entirelycreated on computers. The mix of old and new produces some mightily impressivevisuals and ...
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Reviews
P.S.
Dir: Dylan Kidd USA. 2004.103mins.It was never going to beeasy for New York independent director Dylan Kidd to sustain the motor-mouthedenergy of his sharp, sardonic, stylish debut, Roger Dodger, which netteda shoal of awards (including the Lion of the Future award in Venice two yearsago), before going on to become ...