Latest – Page 701
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Reviews
Sound Of Brazil (Moro No Brasil)
Dir: Mika Kaurismaki. Ger/Fin/Fra/Brazil, 2002. 105 mins.A well-known European arthouse director goes on a musical pilgrimage in a Latin American country. Sounds familiar, no' Echoes of Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club come thick and fast in this roots-of-Samba documentary by cuddly Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki. But in the end, ...
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Reviews
Safe Conduct (Laissez Passer)
Dir: Bertrand Tavernier. France. 2001. 170mins.An ambitious, enormously detailed portrait of a complex and (internationally, at least) little known footnote of World War II, Safe Conduct observes the film-makers working at the Continental, a German studio set up in Paris to produce French movies under the Occupation. Bertrand Tavernier's contention ...
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Reviews
Minor Mishaps (Sma Ulykker)
Dir: Annette K Olesen. Denmark. 2002. 109mins.That peculiarly Danish brand of bittersweet, intimate comedy finds its latest expression in Minor Mishaps, the story of a turbulent family reunion that combines many familiar Dogme elements (although it is not, in the strict sense, a Dogme film) with Mike Leigh's preparation for ...
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Reviews
Happy Times (Xingfu Shiguang)
Dir: Zhang Yimou. China/US. 2000. 96mins The first film from Edward R Pressman and Terrence Malick's Sunflower Productions, Zhang Yimou 's Happy Times is a Chaplinesque sentimental comedy which has its moments of greatness. Even during the more pedestrian scenes, it is difficult not to be warmed by ...
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Reviews
Collateral Damage
Dir: Andrew Davis. US. 2002. 108mins.If it were not for the September 11 terrorist attacks, Collateral Damage - Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest action vehicle - would have been dismissed by critics as yet another popcorn picture, using terrorism as a cheap plot device to advance its gung-ho ...
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Reviews
America So Beautiful
Dir: Babak Shokrian. US. 2001. 91mins.There's an incontestable topical relevance to this tale of young Iranians in Los Angeles in 1979 whose dream of owning their own disco evaporates after the fall of the Shah and the American Embassy hostage drama in Tehran. Having studied in California and worked there ...
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Reviews
Travelling Birds (Le Peuple Migrateur)
Dir: Jacques Perrin. Fr/Ger/Sp. 2001. 97mins.Travelling Birds offers audiences a rare chance to fly like a bird without recourse to mind-expanding drugs. This is the third in a trilogy of big-screen nature films produced - and in this case directed - by former French matinee idol Jacques Perrin. Microcosmos, the ...
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Reviews
A Rumor Of Angels
Dir. Peter O'Fallon US. 2000 104 mins.A sentimental drama about coming to terms with the loss of a loved one, A Rumor Of Angels boasts a first-rate performance from Vanessa Redgrave as an eccentric old woman who claims to have a spiritual connection with the afterlife. Redgrave and a talented ...
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Reviews
Paradox Lake
Dir: Przemyslaw 'Shemie' Reut. US. 2002. 85mins.Neither documentary nor fully fledged drama, Paradox Lake is cinema verite at its most infuriating. Shemie Reut's experimental feature is for the most part tedious and trying, yet its terrifically clever final act hints at what it might have been. It's one of those ...
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Reviews
No Regrets (Nichts Bereuen)
Dir: Benjamin Quabeck. Ger. 2001. 104mins.A blend of comedy and pathos, No Regrets is a light-hearted coming of age story that flags up its lead, newcomer Daniel Bruehl, as one of Germany's upcoming talents to watch. The film has done well in German-speaking territories, where it has taken DM 468,065 ...
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Reviews
Eight Women (Huit Femmes)
Dir: Francois Ozon. France. 2002. 103mins.Clearly not one to be stuffed into a stylistic straitjacket, the erratic, highly talented Francois Ozon has flamboyant fun with Eight Women (Huit Femmes), an old-fashioned Agatha Christie-ish whodunnit made over as high camp with songs and an all-female cast. Although it will no ...
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Reviews
Heaven
Dir: Tom Tykwer. 2001. Germany/US. 97mins.If Run Lola Run was Tom Tykwer's breakthrough film, then the Miramax-backed Heaven is his first big commercial test. The message that we are in very different territory from his smart and stylish 1999 indie hit is made clear in the posters plastering Tykwer's hometown ...
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Reviews
One Hour Photo
Dir: Mark Romanek. US. 2002. 96 mins.Actor Robin Williams gets a wonderful opportunity to stretch (to use Hollywood jargon) in Mark Romanek's feature directorial debut, One Hour Photo, playing a serious dramatic role that deviates from the two screen images that have defined his career: as a funny, ...
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Reviews
Love Liza
Dir Todd Louiso. US 2002. 89mins.Indie icon Philip Seymour Hoffman (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) renders yet another stellar performance in Todd Louiso's delicately directed Love Liza, elevating the film way above its narrow narrative scope and small-scale production. An actor vehicle, written specifically for Hoffman by his older brother Gordy, ...
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Reviews
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Dir: Phillip Noyce. Australia. 2002. 92 mins.It's generally accepted that films about aboriginal Australians are local box office poison, which unfairly adds a layer of difficulty to the marketing of Phillip Noyce's excellent homecoming production. International audiences will have fewer problems with his elemental tale, which cuts raw into the ...
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Reviews
Beneath Clouds
Dir: Ivan Sen. Australia, 2001. 87 mins.Billed as the first feature film by an indigenous Australian director, Beneath Clouds is a promising debut, although its tight-lipped sense of cool tips over into pretension on more than one occasion. It deals with race relations in modern Australia without stridency and without ...
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Reviews
Kung Pow: Enter The Fist
Dir: Steve Oedekerk. US. 2002. 80 mins. Kung Pow: Enter The Fist is a late-night college joke done on a Hollywood budget. Masterminded by writer-director Steve Oedekerk (whose credits include Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, The Nutty Professor and Patch Adams), the film takes an obscure 1970s Hong Kong karate ...
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Reviews
Pinero
Dir: Leon Ichaso. US. 2001. 99mins With his intense, charismatic performance in Pinero, Benjamin Bratt -best known for his tenure on US TV series Law And Order and a few tepid features - reaches a major turning point in his career. Displaying the kind of acting chops associated with the ...
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Reviews
The Kid Stays In The Picture
Dirs: Brett Morgen & Nanette Burstein. US. 2001. 93 mins.As an irresistible portrait of Hollywood narcissism, this documentary adaptation of Robert Evan's memoirs as a studio mogul is a guilty pleasure of the most complicit kind. Shedding their cinema verite backgrounds, the film-making duo of Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein ...
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Reviews
Bad Guy (Na Bun-Na Ja)
Dir. Kim Ki-Duk. South Korea. 2001. 101mins.Certainly one of the most provocative filmmakers around, Korea's Kim Ki-Duk seems to be also one of the most prolific. After two consecutive years in Venice (The Isle in 2000 and Address Unknown in 2001) here he is in the Berlinale race, as unsettling, ...