Latest – Page 654
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Reviews
Napola
Dir. Dennis Gansel.Germany, 2004. 110mins.Earnest, sincere and vociferously outspoken, DennisGansel's portrait of a 1942 Nazi boarding school breeding the future leaders ofthe Thousand Year Reich must be one of the more diligently produced andenergetically directed films to come out of Germany in recent years.At the same time it is alsoone ...
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Reviews
McDull, Prince De La Bun (Makdau Boloyau Wongchi)
Dir: Toe Yuen. Hong Kong.2004. 73minsMove over Babe, there's anew pig in town. If the Oscar-winning Chris Noonan film was still current, thatmight have been one way to market McDull, Prince De La Bun, a sequel tothe 2001 Hong Kong animation hit My Life As McDull, which sold all overAsia.The ...
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Reviews
Forgiveness
Dir. Ian Gabriel. SouthAfrica, 2004. 112mins.There are two thingsgoing for Ian Gabriel's feature film debut Forgiveness. The first isthat it comes from South Africa, which promises to be the film festival flavourof the year (after a competition premiere at Locarno it plays in Toronto's South Africa: Ten YearsLater sidebar next ...
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Reviews
Alien vs Predator
Dir:Paul W S Anderson. US. 2004. 101mins.Withnew backgrounds but the same old bad attitudes, two of 20th Century Fox'ssci-fi icons go head to head in AVP (as the marketing folks havehelpfully abbreviated it), a franchise face-off that looks set to consolidateHollywood's latest genre trend. The match-up, enthusiastically brought to thescreen ...
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Reviews
Tom White
Dir: Alkinos Tsilimidos.Aust. 2004. 106minsWith a standout,hardly-off-the-screen central performance from Colin Friels, Tom Whitecharts the swift descent of its eponymous character from middle-class securityto a desperate life on the streets, utterly broke and hopeless. For his secondfeature, director Alkinos Tsilimidos keeps sentimentality at bay while crediblycharting his protagonist's identity crisis, ...
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Reviews
My Stepbrother Frankenstein
Dir. ValeryTodorovsky. Russia. 2004. 120mins.Mary Shelley'sgothic tale is back, this time comfortably adjusted to fit into modern life inMoscow. But no scientific mumbo-jumbo, expressionistic lighting nor extensivemake-up were needed to create this man-made monster; instead he comes not froma lab but from a dark past. If he has been created ...
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Reviews
Niceland
Dir. Fridrik ThorFridriksson. Ice-Ger-Den-UK. 2004. 87mins.A modern fairytale for disenchanted adults, thelatest Fridrik Thor Fridriksson opus looks pretty and cute but lacks the edgeand authenticity that distinguish most of his previous contributions.Wrapped up inToyland colours for the first half, their tonality soiled later when the storyshifts to a junkyard, Fridriksson's ...
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Reviews
Wall (Mur)
Dir/scr: SimoneBitton. France. 2004. 99minsA poetic reflectionof the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Simone Bitton's documentary focuses itsattention on the massive wall put up by the Sharon government to separate theJewish community from the Arab and, arguably, defuse the terrorist threat.Born a Jew into the Arabian culture ofMorocco but brought up in Israel, ...
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Reviews
Nelly (A Ce Soir)
Dir: Laure Duthilleul.Fr. 2004. 94mins.The complaint isfrequently made that the French production system too often allows film-makersto please themselves rather than justify their intentions to an audience. Thisis a charge unfortunately born out by Nelly, a small, eccentric dramathat was clearly a labour of love for director Laure Duthilleul, but ...
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Reviews
Yasmin
Dir: Kenny Glenaan. UK-Ger.2004. 87minsThree years ago, GasAttack won the Michael Powell Award at Edinburgh and marked out KennyGlennan as a promising new directorial talent. Yasmin confirms hisstatus as a social realist with an ability to focus on the human element in anyheadline-grabbing dramatic situation.Sensitively observed andeconomically staged, Yasmin tells ...
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Reviews
The Ninth Day (Der Neunte Tag)
Dir. VolkerSchloendorff. Ger-Lux. 2004. 97mins.Despiteinitial appearances and a long prologue set inside Dachau concentration camp,Volker Schloendorff's The Ninth Day is no Holocaust film, but a neartheological dissertation on Catholicism and how it held up under the Nazi rule.The victims thistime are not Jews but the Catholic priests sent to concentration ...
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Reviews
Collateral
Dir: Michael Mann. US. 2004. 119 mins. An intriguing noir thriller with an arresting digitalvideo look, Collateral returns masterstylist Michael Mann to the crime genre in which he first made his reputationand earned his loyal cineaste following. If the finished product never achievesthe intensity of Mann's 1995 crime classic Heat- ...
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Reviews
The Village
Dir/sc: M. NightShyamalan. US 2004. 107 minsOstensibly setin the late 19th Century (though the precise period is not specified until latein the final reel), The Village is anarch and eccentric affair. M. Night Shyamalan's craftsmanship and originalityare not in doubt, but his attempts to combine Blair Witch-like horror with ScarletLetter-style ...
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Reviews
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Dir: Danny Leiner.USA 2004. 87 min.There's something sweet, almost childlike about a filmthat equates freedom and the American dream with a fast-food hamburger. But inthe puerile stoner buddy comedy Harold& Kumar Go To White Castle, a sort of melting-pot After Hours for the multiplex set that will likely divide audiencesin ...
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Reviews
In The Battlefields (Maarek Hob)
Dir/scr:Danielle Arbid. Fr-Bel-Leb. 2004. 90minsThe war thatengulfed Lebanon in the early 1980s, turning Beirut from the Paris of theMiddle East into a scarred wasteland of pockmarked and rusting buildings, isonly a metaphor for the chaos and turmoil that most interests the youngLebanese documentary and shorts film-maker Danielle Arbid in her ...
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Reviews
Marseille
Dir:Angela Schanelec. Germany. 2004. 95minsAngelaSchanelec's Marseille starts badly and gets worse. Festival-goers - thefilm played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes - are all too familiar with the kindof movie in which someone unnamed wanders aimlessly and interminably, withoutbenefit of characterisation or plot, around a city. The sad thing about ...
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Reviews
Catwoman
Dir: Pitof. US. 2004. 105 mins.Warner Bros' push to develop new franchises from the characters in its DCComics stable gets off to a shaky start with Catwoman, a flashy butuninvolving Batman spin-off (of sorts) with Halle Berry starring andone-named French talent Pitof directing.Berry's popularity, as well as brand and character ...
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Reviews
She Hate Me
Dir: Spike Lee. US. 2004. 138 mins.There is not a more fascinating - and exasperating -film-maker working today than Spike Lee. He is one of the few directors whosecontrol of the medium is so assured and his style so elegant that a viewercan't help but be sucked into his world. ...
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Reviews
The Manchurian Candidate
Dir:Jonathan Demme. US. 2004. 130 mins.While not all of the choices made in it are successful, Jonathan Demme'scontemporary revamp of John Frankenheimer's marvelous The ManchurianCandidate is unquestionably one of the smarter, more persuasive films toemerge out of a Hollywood studio this year. Loaded with the intensity you'dexpect a cast led ...