Latest – Page 703
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Reviews
Impostor
Dir: Gary Fleder. US. 2001. 95 mins. With a McCarthy-era literary pedigree and thinking man's hunk Gary Sinese producing as well as starring, it's no surprise that Impostor is a sci-fi thriller more concerned with the genre's intellectual than visceral possibilities. Yet while the story offers some interesting topical parallels ...
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Reviews
Burning In The Wind (Brucio Nel Vento)
Dir: Silvio Soldini. It-Switz. 2001. 118 mins.An Italian director makes a film set in Switzerland with mainly Czech actors and dialogue, based on a novel by a Hungarian refugee who writes in French. Sounds like a recipe for an indigestible Europudding. In reality, however, Brucio Nel Vento is Silvio ...
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Reviews
Tricky Life (En La Puta Vida)
Dir: Beatriz Flores Silva. Belg-Uru-Sp-Cuba. 97mins.This ambitious Uruguayan tragi-comedy took its home box office by storm last year, as well as gleaning the top prize at Spain's Iberoamerican Film Festival in November. Uruguay's first-ever nomination to the foreign language Oscar, Tricky Life may also serve to re-ignite the country's ...
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Reviews
The Shipping News
Dir Lasse Hallstrom. US 2001. 111mins.What has happened to the singular vision of Lasse Hallstrom, so clearly evident in his Swedish (My Life As A Dog) and first American film (What's Eating Gilbert Grape')' The Shipping News, his third consecutive film for Miramax, propagates the same compassionate humanism that defined ...
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Reviews
I Am Sam
Dir: Jessie Nelson. US 2001. 134mins.This film about a mentally-challenged father (Penn) whose seven-year old daughter is taken away from him by social workers is as cloying as they come and will try the patience of even the actor's most loyal fans. Certainly there is an audience for this type ...
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Reviews
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Dir: John A Davis. US. 2001. 92 mins.Viacom has loaded a lot of responsibility onto the computer-animated shoulders of Jimmy Neutron. Intended as the basis for a "multi-platform franchise", the character has been popping up for the past 10 months on Viacom's Nickelodeon channel in preparation for a feature debut ...
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Reviews
Ali
Dir: Michael Mann. US 2001. 159mins.The challenge of how to present dramatically the life of Muhammad Ali, arguably the most recognisable and flamboyant celebrity of the 20th century, is only partially met in Michael Mann's Ali. An ambitious but flawed film, it narrowly focuses on one decade in ...
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Reviews
Kate & Leopold
Dir: James Mangold. US. 2001. 120minsSo here's the pitch: a 19th-century English duke gets caught up in a time warp and is transported from New York in 1876 to 2001 where he meets a high-powered career woman. After much comedy derived from the differences between the two, they fall in ...
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Reviews
Enigma
Screened at Sundance (Premieres). Dir: Michael Apted. UK. 2001. 117mins.Revisiting a little-known yet extremely important and heroic chapter of World War II, Michael Apted's Enigma is a compelling, sumptuously-made romantic thriller that is effective in both its political and more personal dimensions. Steeped in the tense atmosphere of wartime Britain, ...
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Reviews
Charlotte Gray
Dir: Gillian Armstrong. UK-US. 2001. 121minsWith such elegant novel adaptations previously like Little Women and the under-rated Oscar And Lucinda, it is disappointing to see film-maker Gillian Armstrong falter somewhat in her respectable but muddled film of Sebastian Faulks' best-selling novel Charlotte Gray. The story of a Scottish woman ...
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Reviews
2001: The Film Year in Review
There were few great films in 2001, but enough good ones by new (Todd Field), developing (Peter Jackson,Baz Luhrmann), and veteran (Lynch, Altman) directors, to make the year moreagreeable. With most studio releases slipshod and slapdash, the interestingfilms were easily evident on first viewing. Hence, choosing the best was notdifficult, ...
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Reviews
Vanilla Sky
Dir Cameron Crowe. US 2001. 136 mins.Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky provides a classic case study of what happens when a mainstream studio, Paramount, and a major Hollywood star, Tom Cruise, take a terrifically-executed Spanish thriller, Open Your Eyes, and turn it into a spectacularly glossy, big-budget, effects-ridden star vehicle that's ...
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Reviews
Iris
Dir Richard Eyre. UK-US.2001. 90 mins.Viewers expecting to get illuminating insights about the literary genius, eccentric philosophy, and complex sexuality of Iris Murdoch, the British celeb of letters who died in 1999, will be disappointed with Richard Eyre’s Iris, a minor, rambling film, almost made-to-order for the dictates of the ...
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Reviews
Women Talking Dirty
Dir: Coky Giedroyc. UK-US. 1999. 97mins. Although a long time in the works for the talent involved (it is Rocket Pictures' first production to hit the screens since the company was founded five years ago and director Coky Giedroyc's follow-up to her noted 1997 debut, Stella Does Tricks), Women Talking ...
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Reviews
Mean Machine
Dir: Barry Skolnick. UK. 2001. 99 mins. A loose remake and Anglicisation of Robert Aldrich's 1974 prison drama staring Burt Reynolds (released in some territories as The Longest Yard), Mean Machine is aimed at the same audience as Ska Films' most notable hits to date, Guy Ritchie's 1997 Lock, Stock ...
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Reviews'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring': Review
Dir Peter Jackson. US.2001. 179 min.Visually striking, thematically grave, and morally weighty, Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, is a miracle of a movie: a three-hour fantasy-action-adventure that not only faithfully captures the spirit of its respectable source material, the ...
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Reviews
Ocean's Eleven
Dir Steven Soderbergh.US. 2001. 116 min.Steven Soderbergh's astonishing artistic renewal, that began three years ago with Out Of Sight and The Limey, and reached anunprecedented height last year with Erin Brockovich (for which he received a directing Oscar nomination) and Traffic (which landed him the coveted prize), begins to show ...
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Reviews
Mad Love (Juana La Loca)
Dir: Vicente Aranda. Sp-It-Port. 117mins. A costume drama driven by lead Pilar Lopez de Ayala's impacting central performance, Mad Love (Juana La Loca) is Spain's official entry for the foreign language Oscar nominations, having beaten out sexier options such as Penelope Cruz film No News From God and Julio ...
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Reviews
The 51st State
Dir: Ronny Yu. UK/Canada. 2001. 92minsA lurid, laddish, bad ass romp, 51st State is so primed and pumped up that It's almost laughable. A wild-eyed enthusiasm for the delights of bloodshed, body fluids and expletive-filled banter should hit the mark with a target audience of young males who like their ...