Latest – Page 26
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Reviews
Captain Abu Raed
Dir/Scr: Amin Matalqa. Jordan/USA 2007. 109mins.Only a handful of full-length films have come out of Jordan in the fifty years since the country's first feature, Struggle in Jarash. This makes Captain Abu Raed's commercial poise and polish all the more remarkable: a moving dramatic fable about an elderly airport janitor's ...
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Reviews
Whatever Lola Wants
Dir: Nabil Ayouch, France/Canada. 2007. 110 mins.French-produced, set between New York and Cairo, scored by an Indian-born French composer and directed by a Moroccan, Whatever Lola Wants practices the same enlightened multiculturalism that it so passionately preaches. But although Nabil Ayouch's mid-budget third feature has its heart in the right ...
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Reviews
Vasermil
Dir: Mushon Salmona. Israel. 2007. 95minsClosely related to the socially-engaged films of Ken Loach and Shane Meadows, Mushon Salmona's debut compensates for his lack of experience with a healthy dose of anger and frustration. Set in the provincial town Beer Sheba where he grew up, Salmona situates his three interwoven ...
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Reviews
El Greco
Dir. Yannis Smaragdis. Greece / Spain / Hungary, 2007. 107minsHaving picked up the Greek cinema State Award on top of the Audience Award at Thessaloniki, this is undisputedly this year's favourite Greek film, racking over 600,000 admissions and still going strong. An historical pageant adapted from a fictional biography by ...
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Reviews
Days and Clouds (Giorni e Nuvole)
Dir: Silvio Soldini Italy/Switzerland 2007. 115 mins.The strongest of the five Italian films that received their national premieres at the Rome Film Fest, Days and Clouds (which also played in Toronto and London) is a fine piece of emotional eye-on-the-object filmmaking from homegrown auteur Silvio Soldini and regular screenplay sidekick ...
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Reviews
Let's Say (On Dirait Que)
Dir: Francoise Marie, France 2007. 82 mins.A touching, telling documentary about older children's perspectives on the world of grown-ups, Let's Pretend That... has the potential to rival the success of Etre et Avoir (To Be and To Have) - Nicolas Phillibert's widely distributed study of a primary school class in ...
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Reviews
Youth Without Youth
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola. Rom/Fr/It. 2007. 124minsTen years after the polished, anonymous professionalism of The Rainmaker, Francis Ford Coppola returns with an epic, magic realist tale of miraculous rejuvenation. Anyone who hoped that life might imitate art will be sorely disappointed by Youth Without Youth. This is an amateur production ...
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Reviews
Soul Carriage
Dir: Conrad Clark. UK/China 2007. 82 mins.A surprise winner of the Altadis new directors' award at the San Sebastian film festival, Conrad Clark's Soul Carriage is original in two important ways. Firstly because the 28-year-old British director's debut film is entirely set in south-eastern China , with Chinese actors and ...
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Reviews
Sigur Ros Heima
Dir: Dean DeBois. Iceland 2007. 97 mins.The haunting music of Reykjavik-formed band Sigur Ros and the breathtaking beauty of the Icelandic landscape are showcased to impressive effect in the concert film Sigur Ros Heima. Taking its title from the Icelandic for 'At Home' or 'Homeland', the film follows the four-member ...
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Reviews
Shadows in the Palace (Goong Nyeo)
Dir: Kim Mi-jung. South Korea 2007. 111 mins.To get a handle on Kim Mi-jung's impressive debut, imagine The Name of the Rose set it in a Korean royal court of the Joseon dynasty. The big difference, apart from the cultural transposition, is that this historical murder mystery takes place in ...
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Reviews
Flawless
Dir: Michael Radford. UK/Luxembourg 2007. 105 mins.A diamond heist thriller set in pre-swinging London circa 1960, Flawless is polished but hollow. It's not just the setting that is retro: the story itself feels a little old-fashioned, like The Day they Robbed the Bank of England or Rififi with fewer accomplices ...
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Reviews
Glory To The Filmmaker (Kantoku Banzai)
Dir. Takeshi Kitano. Japan. 2007.Takeshi Kitano's last couple of films confirm that Japan 's maverick filmmaker is having a hard time deciding which way to go next and feels the urgent need to share it with his audience. After the jaundiced look at the film industry in general, and his ...
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Reviews
Encarnacion
Dir: Anahi Berneri. Argentina 2007. 96 mins.A subtle character study of a once-famous TV actress who is past her sell-by date, Encarnacion confirms Anahi Berneri as one of the most promising of Argentina 's new wave of directors, after her well-received AIDS-themed debut A Year Without Love (2005). Though the ...
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Reviews
La Maison
Dir: Manuel Poirier. France 2007. 96 mins.French director Manuel Poirier delivers his most convincing feature since the bittersweet 1997 road-movie Western with La Maison, an emotionally delicate romantic comedy that once again features Poirier regular Sergi Lopez in the lead role. A rural house that's up for sale becomes a ...
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Reviews
Mataharis
Dir: Icair Bollain. Spain 2007. 94 mins.A bittersweet tale of frustrated lives and loves centring on three female private investigators, Mataharis is a decently plotted but decidedly tame follow-up to Icair Bollain's previous film, the convincing 2003 wife-abuse drama Take My Eyes. A leading Spanish actress, Bollain was inspired to ...
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Reviews
Earth
Dir: Alastair Fothergill/Mark Linfield. UK/Germany 2007. 98 mins.Probably the most ambitious nature documentary ever produced, Earth is a feature-length condensation of the eleven-part BBC series Planet Earth, broadcast in the UK in 2006 and on Discovery Channel in the US in spring 2007. Better than a trip to the zoo, ...
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Reviews
In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia)
Dir. Jose Luis Guerin. Spain / France, 2007. 90 min.In the City of Sylvia is likely to be defined by some as 'a work of genius' and by others as like 'watching paint dry'. An audience in search of a plot with a beginning middle and end should look elsewhere. ...
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Reviews
The Obscure (Xiaoshuo)
Dir. Lu Yue. China 2006. 84 min.Potentiallya powerful soporific for any audience not fluent in Mandarin, Lu Yue's combination of documentary and improvised live action is almost self-defeating in its insistence to stick, for the first hour, to a purely theoretical seminar. As it is, Lu's picture could interest scholars ...
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Reviews
Foul Gesture (Tnuah Meguna)
Dir: Tzahi Grad. Israel 2006. 96 mins.A satirical social comedy turns into a terrific, slow-burn revenge drama in Israeli actor Tzahi Grad's second directorial outing. Though the rough, low-budget production values will put off mainstream distributors, arthouse and genre specialists should take a look at this title, whose strong script ...