Latest – Page 697
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Reviews
Deuces Wild
Dir: Scott Kalvert. US. 2002. 97minsDeuces Wild is a throwback. Not just because it is set in the world of gang wars in 1950s Brooklyn, but because it so happily recalls those dated rumble movies of the early 1980s like The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Matt Dillon even shows up, ...
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Reviews
Jason X
Dir: Jim Isaac. US. 2002. 93mins.Putting hockey-masked slasher icon Jason into space sounds a desperate idea for reviving the Friday The 13th horror franchise. But while this 10th instalment in the 22-year-old series relies on the same crude, high-body-count schlock appeal as its predecessors, it still manages to have some ...
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Reviews
Hollywood Ending
Dir: Woody Allen. US.2002. 112 mins.Woody Allen's HollywoodEnding follows more in thevein of his recent run of pleasurable but throwaway comedies than it does thefar more emotionally affecting Purple Rose Of Cairo, his other film to deal specifically with cinema itself. With an emphasis on visual humour, both literal and ...
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Reviews
Spider-Man (Spider-Man)
Dir: Sam Raimi. US. 2002. 121mins.Even in the face of new Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings movies, no film this year can have the want-to-see already generated by Columbia Pictures' Spider-Man, a lavish $150m live-action movie of the beloved comic strip, which has been in gestation ...
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Reviews
A Snake Of June (Rokugatsu No Hebi)
Dir: Shinya Tsukamoto. Japan. 2002. 80 mins.Having burst onto the international indie scene in 1989 with Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Shinya Tsukamoto has always been a one-main show, writing, filming, editing and acting his private visions of a nightmare world in which humans have fused to machines, all set to ...
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Reviews
Life Or Something Like It
Dir: Stephen Herek. US. 2002. 103 mins. "Live every day as if it was your last" is the none-too-original moral of Life Or Something Like It, an insipid romantic-comedy/drama that casts Angelina Jolie as a post-feminist Marilyn Monroe who discovers the drawbacks of blonde ambition and the virtues of true ...
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Reviews
Biggie & Tupac
Dir: Nick Broomfield. UK. 2001. 107mins. The ostensible subject of Nick Broomfield's first feature since Kurt & Courtney, his controversial 1998 film about the suicide of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, is the unresolved murders of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Its actual subject is much the same as ...
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Reviews
Casomai
Dir: Alessandro D'Alatri. Italy. 2002. 116mins.Alessandro D'Alatri is back with a stylish romantic comedy which draws more than any of his previous outings on his other job - directing TV commercials. Set in contemporary Milan, Casomai will appeal to the generation it depicts: urban professional thirtysomethings, caught between work, the ...
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Reviews
Murder By Numbers
Dir: Barbet Schroeder. US. 2002. 120mins.Murder By Numbers is an ambitious attempt to make a multi-layered murder investigation film, loosely retelling the chilling Leopold and Loeb case which has intrigued everyone from Alfred Hitchcock in Rope to Tom Kalin in Swoon. And with Barbet Schroeder behind the camera, the film ...
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Reviews
The Scorpion King
Dir: Chuck Russell. US. 2002. 92mins.The Mummy franchise lives on in this rumbustious, two-fisted prequel that serves up breathless, B-movie action with A-level production values. Promoted to centre stage, Dwayne Johnson, aka wrestler The Rock, lays down a persuasive marker as a 21st-century action hero and the heady mixture of ...
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Reviews
The Warrior
Dir: Asif Kapadia. UK/India. 2001. 86minsA poised and confident first feature, The Warrior is an ambitious mixture of morality tale and sweeping adventure set against the spectacular scenery and burning light of Rajasthan and the Himalayas. The absorbing story of one man's renunciation of violence and his quest for peace ...
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Reviews
The Hour Of Religion (L'Ora di Religione)
Dir: Marco Bellocchio. Italy. 2002. 103mins.The term "auteur" is not much used these days outside of ironic quotation marks. But it is difficult to think of a better description for Italian director Marco Bellocchio, now well into his fourth creative decade. The story of an atheist painter who suddenly discovers ...
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Reviews
Changing Lanes
Dir: Roger Michell. US. 2002. 98 mins. Part psychological thriller, part urban morality play, Changing Lanes is that rare Hollywood offering that works both as genre entertainment and as something more complex and thought-provoking. Deftly directed - in a significant change of mood from his 1999 romantic-comedy Notting Hill - ...
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Reviews
The Shanghai Spell (El Embrujo De Shanghai)
Dir: Fernando Trueba. Spain. 2002. 122mins.Lush, even exotic, set designs and costumes are the biggest draws for The Shanghai Spell (El Embrujo De Shanghai), Oscar-award winning director Fernando Trueba's (Belle Epoque) 1940s drama. Trueba's reputation, and strong international interest in his recent hits such as jazz documentary 54th Street (Calle ...
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Reviews
KT
Dir: Junji Sakamoto. Jap. 2001. 138mins.A thriller about the true-life 1973 kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung, the current South Korean president, from a Tokyo hotel, KT tries for a no-frills approach that presents its knotty Cold War story in realistic shades of grey, as if John Le Carre was transposed to ...
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Reviews
Dandy (La Bande Du Drugstore)
Dir: Francois Armanet. France. 2001. 98 mins.Dandy suffers from some of the same superficiality as the posturing, blow-dried youths it portrays. It's difficult to see this film, about Parisian rich kids during the mid to late 1960s, appealing to their modern-day peers in the 16 to 20-year-old age group, who ...
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Reviews
Take Care Of My Cat
Dir: Jeong Jae-eun. Korea. 2001. 112 mins.Take Care Of My Cat is a sympathetic, modern coming-of-age movie. As such it is a Korean antidote to the make-believe and squeaky-clean Hollywood approach adopted by Britney Spears-vehicle Crossroads, which examines a similar demographic. Structured as a slightly unbalanced five-hander with a tone ...
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Reviews
God's Bankers (I Banchieri Di Dio)
Dir: Giuseppe Ferrara. Italy. 2002. 127mins.With its controversial reconstruction of the life and mysterious death of Italian banker Roberto Calvi, Giuseppa Ferrara's latest film was designed to create an even bigger stir than his earlier political outings. God's Bankers has done so on one level at least: at the end ...
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Reviews
The Best Day Of My Life (Il Piu Bel Giorno Della Mia Vita)
Dir: Cristina Comencini. Italy-UK 2002. 102 mins.Like all of Cristina Comencini's films, The Best Day Of My Life is about relationships: family relationships, sexual relationships and the troubled relationship between the two. A large ensemble piece, it features some of the strongest acting talents on the Italian scene, from veteran ...
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Reviews
Big Trouble
Dir: Barry Sonnenfeld. US. 2002. 84 mins. Delayed from last September because of its stolen bomb and plane hijacking plot points, Barry Sonnenfeld's Big Trouble arrives belatedly on US screens as a lightweight but pleasantly zany farce with a never-ending supply of gags and a more than capable ensemble cast ...