Latest – Page 664
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Reviews
Maria Full Of Grace
Dir: Joshua Marston. US/Colombia. 2004. 101mins.Yet further confirmation that HBO Films is now the beating heart of US independent cinema, Maria Full Of Grace is a riveting portrait of drug mules transporting heroin from Colombia into the US which is as much intense thriller as it is powerful social comment.A ...
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Reviews
Open Water
Dir: Chris Kentis. US. 2004. 79minsBased on a true story about a husband and wife who were accidentally left behind while scuba-diving 18 miles from shore, Open Water, which played in the American Spectrum sidebar at Sundance, is a bargain-basement scary movie that should more than repay its investment. What ...
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Reviews
Super Size Me!
Dir: Morgan Spurlock. US. 2003. 98 minsSundance buyers were drawn to this highly entertaining documentary like kids to candy and Big Macs for good reason: director Morgan Spurlock does to McDonalds fast food what Michael Moore did to both General Motors and the National Rifle Association in his canonical documentary ...
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Reviews
The Woodsman
Dir: Nicole Kassel. US. 2004. 85mins.As Capturing The Friedmans made abundantly clear, there is no crime more heinous in the public imagination than paedophilia. So a dramatic feature that has a paedophile as its protagonist would seem to be engaging in taboo for taboo's sake. Which is why The Woodsman, ...
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Reviews
Napoleon Dynamite
Dir: Jared Hess. US. 2004. 86mins.Napoleon Dynamite, which was met in Park City by raucous cheers and bursts of unsuppressed chuckling, is exactly the kind of off-beat comedy that delights otherwise earnest festivals such as Sundance. Within hours of its first screening, word on this occasionally-inspired portrait of Loserville, Idaho, ...
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Reviews
Employee Of The Month
Dir: Mitch Rouse. US. 2004. 97 mins.Few films deserved a slot in the Sundance Film Festival less than the repellent Employee Of The Month, a bungled attempt to blend gross-out comedy with double-cross heist thriller which had buyers walking out and audiences shaking their heads in dismay in Park City.Despite ...
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Reviews
Stork Day (E Gia Ieri)
Dir: Giulio Manfredonia. Italy/Spain/UK. 2004. 94 mins.Why would anyone want to remake a film as unique as Groundhog Day' The only original thing about this bland, inoffensive attempt to do just that is the fact that it is a European remake of an American film. Producer Riccardo Tozzi's claim that ...
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Reviews
Easy
Dir. Jane Weinstock. US. 2003. 95mins.Despite a premiere at Toronto last autumn, followed by a competition slot at Sundance this month, Easy would do best to stay aware from the glare of film festivals. Given the right treatment, this romantic romp might land some deals, especially in secondary markets. But ...
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Reviews
The Butterfly Effect
Dir: Eric Bress & J Mackye Gruber. US. 2004. 113mins.This efficient if wildly elaborate supernatural thriller, which world premiered at Sundance this week and opens through New Line on Jan 23, should be a moderate-to-strong moneyspinner for the studio which has become the home for smart, low-budget youth-oriented horror like ...
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Reviews
The Silence Between Two Thoughts (Sokoote Beine Do Fekr )
Dir: Babak Payami. Iran. 2003. 88mins.There were three Iranian films at Venice last year; and all three were newsworthy. One (Hana Makhmalbaf's Joy Of Madness) because the director was only 14. Another (Abolfazl Jalili's The First Letter) because the director had been detained in Teheran by the authorities. And the ...
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Reviews
November
Director: Greg Harrison US. 2004. 78mins.Screening in Dramatic Competition at Sundance, November is a psychological thriller that jolts the brain but has more trouble tugging the heartstrings. Exploring how subjective our memory becomes, particularly in the aftermath of trauma, this low-budget film challenges its audience to sort out fact from ...
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Reviews
Astronauts (Astronautas)
Dir: Santi Amodeo. 86mins. 2003. Spain.It's the same old story: if Astronauts (Astronautas) was set in Savannah rather than Seville and shot in English instead of lispy Spanish, this misleadingly-titled indie gem might take off. Instead, it is likely to follow in the wake of so many bygone but deserving ...
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Reviews
Garden State
Dir: Zach Braff. US. 2004. 112mins.Screening in Dramatic Competition at Sundance, Zach Braff's promising first feature has three of the elements that make debut films appealing: a new face, a fresh voice and a distinct way of seeing the world, all embodied in the triple threat that is Braff: director, ...
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Reviews
Motorcycle Diaries
Dir: Walter Salles. US-Argentina-Chile-Peru. 2003. 128minsA stirringly compassionate road movie that charts Ernesto "Che" Guevara's political awakening over the course of one seminal year, Motorcycle Diaries proved the early revelation at this year's Sundance Film Festival where Focus Features swept it up within hours of its world premiere screening on ...
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Reviews
Apres Vous
Dir: Pierre Salvadori. France. 2003. 110 mins.Smart, tart and winningly funny, Apres Vous... marks Pierre Salvadori's return to the front rank of French comedy writer-directors. Salvadori, who first attracted attention with Wild Target, a 1992 black comedy about a hit man (played by Jean Rochefort), made his real critical and ...
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Reviews
Three Steps Dancing (Ballo A Tre Passi)
Dir: Salvatore Mereu. Italy. 2003. 106 mins.Islands are becoming a real force in Italian cinema. Not just films set on islands, like Respiro or L'Isola, but films made by islanders. Aside from the offerings of temple elders Bertolucci and Bellocchio, the two most invigoratingly different Italian films to appear at ...
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Reviews
My Architect
Dir: Nathaniel Kahn. US. 2003. 116mins.One of the 12 films shortlisted for the best documentary feature Academy Award and a healthy box office performer to the tune of $0.4m in its first two months of domestic release through New Yorker Films, My Architect is yet another theatrically marketable documentary to ...
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Reviews
Along Came Polly
Dir: John Hamburg. US. 2003. 90 mins.John Hamburg, the co-writer of Zoolander and Meet The Parents, delivers a forgettable romantic comedy in Along Came Polly, his second feature as a director after the 1998 caper Safe Men. Although there are belly laughs along the way and a highly appealing cast, ...
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Reviews
Seducing Dr Lewis (La Grande Seduction)
Dir. Jean-Francois Pouliot. Canada. 2003. 108mins.Making its US premiere in Sundance's World Cinema programme, Seducing Dr Lewis (La Grande Seduction), which premiered in Director's Fortnight at Cannes last year, has been described as a Quebecois version of The Full Monty. But it's closer in spirit to films such as Waking ...