Latest – Page 699
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Reviews
Kissing Jessica Stein
Dir: Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. US 2001. 96minsHalfway into the gender-bending romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein, the 28-year-old, eponymous heroine describes herself as "a Jewish Sandra Dee". A more apt comparison might be Annie Hall, whose physical mannerisms and stammering speech patterns actress/writer Jennifer Westfeldt seems to have appropriated for her character. ...
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Reviews
Resident Evil
Dir: Paul W S Anderson. UK-Ger. 2002. 100mins.Resident Evil is strictly for the game boys. Of course, given that the computer games on which the film is based have sold more than 16m units worldwide, the game boys - lured by the promise of gory zombie effects and Milla Jovovich ...
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Reviews
Harrison's Flowers
Dir Elie Chouraqui. US/France 2000. 123mins.A stronger, more charismatic actress would have given Harrison's Flowers, the war melodrama directed by Frenchman Eli Chouraqui, a sharper dramatic focus than it gets in the hands of Andie MacDowell, an appealing actress who's more adept in light romantic comedies (Four Weddings And A ...
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Reviews
The Time Machine
Dir: Simon Wells. US. 2002. 97mins.Almost from start to finish, The Time Machine, the new remake of HG Wells's classic sci-fi novel, is a poorly conceived and executed film, failing to take full advantage of the major technical changes that have improved the sci-fi-fantasy genre during the past two ...
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Reviews
Ice Age
Dirs: Chris Wedge, Carlos Sladanha. US. 2002. 81 mins. It may not have the stuff to top - either commercially or creatively - Shrek and Monsters, Inc, but with its impressive computer animation, appealing characters and well-crafted blend of comedy, action and drama Ice Age certainly has the necessary ingredients ...
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Reviews
All About The Benjamins
Dir: Kevin Bray. US. 2002. 96 mins. With three mid-level hits for New Line - Friday, Next Friday and The Players Club - already under his belt, rapper -turned-multihyphenate film-maker Ice Cube continues in a cheerfully generic vein with the studio's All About The Benjamins, only this time with the ...
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Reviews
Amnesia
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores. Italy/Spain. 2002. 114mins.Amnesia is the second 'little' film to be fired off by Gabriele Salvatores while he tries to raise the funds to make an adaptation of Amitav Ghosh's novel The Calcutta Chromosome. Teeth (Denti, 2000) was a curious tale of precarious dental and mental health which ...
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Reviews
Skins
Dir: Chris Eyre. US. 2002. 86minViewers looking to Native American director Chris Eyre for a buoyant follow-up to his 1996 indie smash Smoking Signals will come away disappointed with Skins, a film that like his feature debut, examines life at a dilapidated Indian reservation from the inside, but lacks the ...
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Reviews
Pumpkin
Dirs: Adam Larson Broder, Tony R Abrams. US. 2002. 122min.Too rambling and diffuse for its own good, Pumpkin, Adam Larson Broder and Tony R Abrams feature directorial debut, is a youth comedy that suffers from an uncertain tone and conflicting intentions. Christina Ricci, one of the most audacious actresses of ...
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Reviews
40 Days And 40 Nights
Dir: Michael Lehmann. US. 2002. 95mins.Stripping the military uniform that he valiantly wore in his last two screen roles (Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down) for sexier civilian clothes in his new romantic comedy proves to be a good idea for broadening the appeal of fast-rising star Josh Hartnett among ...
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Reviews
On The Road To Emmaus
Dir: Markku Polonen. Finland. 2001. 77mins.Markku Polonen has been on Finland's film-making scene for nearly two decades, but On The Road To Emmaus buzzes with the irrepressible anarchic spirit of a first or second feature. Premiered in Helsinki last October, the film had local critics calling Polonen a Finnish Fellini ...
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Reviews
The Diaries Of Vaslav Nijinsky
Dir: Paul Cox. Australia. 2002. 95 mins.One of prolific Paul Cox's most admired movies is his 1987 'docudrama' Vincent, a portrait of Van Gogh told by flowing imagery and close inspection of the paintings in situ, accompanied by voice over excerpts (read by John Hurt) from Vincent's letters to his ...
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Reviews
Stones (Piedras)
Dir: Ramon Salazar. Spain. 2001. 130mins.Some Spanish critics have seen Ramon Salazar as Pedro Almodovar's heir, and Stones certainly looks on paper like a sequel to the latter's 1991 comedy High Heels: it tells five women's interlocking stories through their feelings about their feet. The female-dominated subject, a light scattering ...
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Reviews
Coastlines
Dir Victor Nunez. US. 2002. 116min.Coastlines, Victor Nunez's latest film to be set on the unique landscape of Florida's unfamiliar coast, should be regarded as an instalment in his Panhandle trilogy, a follow-up to the poetic Ruby In Paradise (1993) and character-driven Ulee's Gold (1997), which featured Peter Fonda in ...
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Reviews
Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven
Dir: Daniel Burman. Argentina/Spain. 2001. 98mins.A brooding, fatalistic romance, faintly reminiscent of Julio Medem's Lovers Of The Arctic Circle or Vincent Ward's A Map Of The Human Heart in mood, Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven establishes third-time director Daniel Burman as a talent to watch. Burman's first two films, A ...
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Reviews
Dragonfly
Dir Tom Shadyac. US. 2002. 104min.The Mothman Prophecies meets Patch Adams in Dragonfly, a preposterously plotted, highly sentimental supernatural thriller that lacks suspense or credibility even on its own terms. A star vehicle for Kevin Costner, who has not had a decent role in a long time, this manipulative hokum ...
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Reviews
We Were Soldiers
Dir: Randall Wallace. US. 2002. 140min.The war genre, vigorously energised with such seminal films as Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Ridley Scott's visually impressive Black Hawk Down, takes several steps backwards with We Were Soldiers, an old-fashioned, moralistic Vietnam war movie that pays tribute not just to the soldiers in ...
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Reviews
Walking On Water
Dir: Tony Ayres. Australia. 2002. 90 mins.An exploration of premature death and how to grieve for a loved one who had lived outside of a conventional family, Walking On Water resembles Longtime Companion (1990) and similar independent American films to emerge from the Aids epidemic in the early Nineties; it ...
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Reviews
The Cockettes
Dir: David Weissman & Bill Weber. US. 2002. 99mins.This marvellously evocative documentary was a clear audience favourite at the Sundance Film Festival, and was equally well-received at its Panorama screening in Berlin this week. A bidding war for US rights is underway and international arthouse buyers are also likely ...
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Reviews
On_Line
Dir: Jed Weintrob. USA. 2001. 85mins.A romantic comedy about a group of young New Yorkers looking for sex and possibly even love on the Internet, On_Line offers a refreshing alternative to such feeble Hollywood attempts to milk the theme as the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie You've Got Mail. Shot in ...