Latest – Page 40
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ReviewsPonyo on the Cliff By The Sea (Gake No Ue No Ponyo)
Dir-scr: Hayao Miyazaki. Jap. 2008. 101minsVisually, it’s extraordinary; imaginatively, it’s daring. Once again Hayao Miyasaki is playing in a league of his own with Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea, a sweet, gentle, moving, and always delightful Japanese take on the classic Little Mermaid fable. Commercially, it has the ...
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ReviewsThe Burning Plain
Dir: Guillermo Arriaga. USA. 2008. 105 mins.His much-publicised falling out with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu seems to have done Guillermo Arriaga the world of good. The Burning Plain, which the Mexican writer directed from his own script, is a powerful contemporary melodrama, more restrained but also ...
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ReviewsAchilles And The Tortoise
Dir: Takeshi Kitano. Japan. 2008. 119mins.Takeshi Kitano’s trilogy looking at his own career, his relations to the industry and cinema itself takes yet another turn in its final part which at first appears to be less self-obsessed than his two previous efforts but soon follows the ...
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ReviewsZ32
Dir: Avi Mograbi. Israel-France. 2008. 81mins.Avi Mograbi’s documentary essay takes the themes of Cannes hitWaltz With Bashir one step further and explores the guilt that many Israelis face every day of their lives. Mograbi films a young soldier who takes full responsibility for the war crimes ...
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ReviewsCold Lunch (Lonsj)
Dir: Eva Sorhaug. Norway. 2008. 86mins.A few good scenes, some quirky characters and a striking visual style don’t quite add up to a hot meal in Eva Sorhaug’s bite-sized Cold Lunch. Screening as an out of competition title in this year’s Critics’ Week, the Norwegian interlinked ...
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ReviewsInju, The Beast In The Shadow
Dir: Barbet Schroeder. France. 2008. 105mins.Oral, written and visual storytelling traditions converge in Inju, The Beast In The Shadow, a duel of wits between two successful novelists - one a media staple, the other a recluse - and the geisha girl with a connection to both ...
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ReviewsNowhere Man
Dir: Patrice Toye. Belgium. 2008. 96mins.A middle-aged bureaucrat drops out and goes to live on an exotic island in Patrice Toye’s flawed update of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. Marred by a script which has little interest in its characters and an unrealistic bent where things happen ...
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ReviewsBroken Lines (2007)
Dir: Sallie Aprahamian. UK. 2008. 113mins.Immersed in the gritty multicultural realities and historical short-circuits of life in the northern suburb of Finsbury Park, Broken Lines is one of the rare films that nails the odd flavour of contemporary London. Like Shane Meadows’ recent Somers Town, it ...
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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
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
Mad Detective
Dir. Johnny To, Wai Ka Fai. Hong Kong 2007. 89 min.The prolific Johnny To and his occasional collaborator Wai Ka Fai here put a new twist on the standard police yarn. No longer simply good cop versus bad cop, they add a third angle, the mad cop, who uses neither ...
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Reviews
Cargo 200 (Gruz 200)
Dir: Alexey Balabanov, Russia 2007, 86minsAlexey Balabanov's eleventh feature is one of his bleakest. Set in provincial Russia in 1984 as the USSR enters its death throes, it portrays a society that is sickly, violent and cynical. The title refers to the name given to corpses of Russian soldiers being ...
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Reviews
Don't Think About It (Non Pensarci)
Dir: Gianni Zanasi Italy 2007. 108 mins.The real surprise of the 2007 Venice Days sidebar on the Lido , Don't Think About It is that rarest of things: an exportable Italian comedy that features neither Roberto Benigni nor Nanni Moretti. Directed with an admirable lightness of touch by Gianni Zanasi ...
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Reviews
The Sweet and the Bitter (Il Dolce e l'Amaro)
Dir: Andrea Porporati Italy 2007. 99 mins.The Italian Mafia film comes of age with The Sweet and the Bitter, a Sicilian Goodfellas that offers a refreshingly unheroic, sometimes darkly comic take on the grubby reality behind the rituals and myths of Cosa Nostra. Like another recent title, Stefano Incerti's L'Uomo ...