Latest – Page 55
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Reviews
Restless
Dir: Amos Kollek. Israel/ Canada/ Germany/ France/ Belgium, 2007. 100 mins.Back home in Israel after many years of self-imposed exile in Manhattan, Amos Kollek presents Restless as his most personal film to date. With a reputation as an American independent specializing in portraits of anti-social dropouts, he has apparently decided ...
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Reviews
Another Love Story (Mare, Nossa Historia de Amor)
Dir: Lucia Murat. Brazil/France/Uruguay. 2008. 105 mins.'It's the West Side Story of the Brazilian favelas'. Indeed - but for all the energy, goodwill and rhythmic drive of this colourful teen musical, what sounds great on the poster is less convincing on the screen. Though some of the dance sequences are ...
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Reviews
Beautiful
Dir: Juhn Jaihong Korea, 2007. 88minsBeautiful, whose original title in Korean is the mellifluous 'Arumbdabda', is often confused and sometimes, especially near the end, even downright silly, but it's never wholly without interest. Its first-time 30-year-old director, Juhn Jaihong, is a protege of Kim Ki-duk, the prodigiously productive and internationally-known ...
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Reviews
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
Dir: Matt Wolf. US. 2008. 70mins.A long-neglected cult musician gets his well-deserved moment in the limelight in Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, a moving, celebratory documentary that will turn many viewers on to its subject's strange, compelling sounds. Expect neither myth-making nor music-biz scandal from this level-headed, informative ...
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Reviews
Our Mother (Kabei)
Dir: Yoji Yamada. Japan 2007. 132 minsIn Kabei - Our Mother, Yamada's 80th film to date, the veteran Japanese director offers a sweet, gentle, weepy recollection of Japan on the eve of the Second World War (1940-41), based on the autobiographical story by Teruyo Nogami.An out-and-out melodrama, the picture tells ...
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Reviews
Filth and Wisdom
Dir: Madonna. UK. 2008. 81 minsContrary to billing, there's not much filth and precious little wisdom in Madonna's directing debut. Even so, you have to applaud her for daring to get behind a camera, given that her career in front of it has been strewn with clunkers. While Filth And ...
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Reviews
What No One Knows (Det Som Ingen Wed)
Dir. Soren Kragh-Jacobsen. Denmark/Sweden, 2008. 95minsNow 61, Danish director Soren Kragh-Jacobsen has only made a handful of films in the last thirty years, and while they have done well in Denmark , they haven't left much of a mark elsewhere. The well-known exception was Mifune (1999) which enjoyed the distinction ...
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Reviews
Sonetaula (2007)
Dir: Dir. Salvatore Mereu. Italy/France/Belgium.2008. mins Sonetaula, Sicilian director Salvatore Mereu's remarkable second feature, follows, in measured scenes of great formal beauty, a young Sardinian man's tragic arc from his adolescence in the late 1930s as a mountain shepherd to his life on the run as a bandit and fugitive. ...
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Reviews
Full Battle Rattle
Dir: Tony Gerber, Jesse Ross. US. 2008. 92 minsAmerican tanks roll under the desert sun, the minaret of a mosque stands out on the horizon, a wounded soldier spurts blood... a scene from the Iraq war, surely' Not quite - the tanks are real, but the mosque isn't, and ...
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Reviews
War Child
Dir: Christian Karim Chrobog. USA . 2007. 94 mins.Most hip-hop artists sell themselves on their school-of-hard-knocks credentials, but few rappers can have known the kind of hell that Sudanese artist Emmanuel Jal has endured - and lived to tell the tale. A universe apart from the ...
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Reviews
The Path (El Camino)
Dir: Ishtar Yasin Gutierrez. Costa Rica/Nicaragua/France. 2008. 91 mins. The road trip of two desperately poor Nicaraguan kids in search of their absent mother becomes an other-worldly journey with echoes of The Night Of The Hunter in Costa Rican director Ishtar Yasin's impressive debut, which screened in the Forum. ...
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Reviews
Night and Day (Bam gua Nat)
Dir: Hong Sangsoo, S. Korea, 2008. 147mins.Light, charming but not terribly engaging, and as French as any Korean film is ever going to get, Hong Sangsoo's full-on tribute to the New Wave follows Korean expatriates around the City Of Lights. While brevity has never been one of Hong's particular talents, ...
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Reviews
Standard Operating Procedure
Dir. Errol Morris, USA, 2008, 117minsWhatever the future brings in Iraq, the US role there will always be remembered for the abuse of prisoners documented in the photographs taken by American guards in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Errol Morris's cold Standard Operating Procedure scrutinizes the pictures and ...
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ReviewsLater (Plus Tard Tu Comprenderas)
Dir: Amos Gitai. France / Germany, 2008. 89mins.The first Gitai film in a long time not to deal with Israeli politics, Later (Plus Tard Tu Comprenderas) is also one of his most emotional outings to date. This Franco-German co-production based on Jerome Clement’s autobiographical book (Clement ...
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Reviews
Cherry Blossoms (Kirschblüten - Hanami)
Dir: Doris Dorrie, Germany, 2008, 127minsDoris Dorrie's bittersweet film is a story of mourning and the futility of trying to recover something lost. A Bavarian husband who is nearing retirement loses his wife suddenly, and flies to Japan to visit sites that she never had a chance to see while ...
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Reviews
Sparrow (Man Jeuk)
Dir: Johnnie To. Hong Kong. 2008. 87 mins.The spirit of Jacques Demy lives on in Hong Kong in prolific genre auteur Johnnie To's latest offering. Some of the scenes in this gentle romantic pickpocketing yarn are pure cinematic pleasure, but in the end the plot and the characters are too ...
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Reviews
Love And Other Crimes (Liebe und andere Verbrechen)
Dir. Stefan Arsenijevic, Ger/Serb/Aust/Slovenia 2008, 105minsIn Love and Other Crimes, Anica (Dobra) is a woman approaching middle age who decides to leave her dreary high-rise Belgrade suburb with the money that she plans to steal from a solarium run by an older mobster (Stojanovic) who is her boss and lover. ...
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Reviews
Good Man Dog
Dir: Singing Chen. Taiwan, 2007. 118 mins.Singing Chen's bleak but richly-detailed portrait of contemporary Taiwan has elicited praise for its artistic ambitions but will do well to move past the festival world and into art-house release.Her second feature boast four separate stories, each playing out separately with occasional overlap until ...
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Reviews
Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger (2007)
Dir: Cathy Randall. Australia, 2008. 103minsThis charming, highly-accomplished first feature will gladden the hearts of parents everywhere looking for a film to watch with their pre-teens, especially girls. Directed by 35-year-old South-African-born newcomer Cathy Randall, who has been working in Australia for some years, this coming-of-age story of a 13-year-old ...