All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 41
-
Reviews
August Rush
Dir: Kirsten Sheridan. US/Korea 2007. 111mins. August Rush opens as it means to continue - with a young boy up to his eyes in corn. But you have to hand it to director Kirsten Sheridan: the sheer dewy-eyed belief in miracles of this music-based fairy tale is persuasive, and those ...
-
News
Critical Mass with Lee Marshall -Past perfect
There's a film that's been building in my mind ever since I saw it, to the point where I've started to think it might just be the future of cinema. It's En La Ciudad De Sylvia by Jose Luis Guerin, a Spanish director who every five years or so makes ...
-
News
Critical Mass: What happened to the 90-minute film'
Whatever happened to the 90-minute film' You only have to look at the top prizes at Venice this year to realise this classic running time is no longer the norm. The Golden Lion went to Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (156 minutes). The Special Jury prize was shared by The Secret ...
-
Reviews
Echo
Denmark/Germany/Sweden 2007. 84 mins.An edgy, horror-tinged thriller about a divorced father's abduction of his young son is marred by a heavy-handed use of backstory in Anders Morgenthaler's Echo. But the second film of the versatile Danish director still has enough going for it as a twisted take on the Scandinavian ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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, ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
News
Festival review: Venice
Critical wrapMarco Mueller may have been pipped to the post by a fictitious candidate, L.K. Ching, in an informal poll of (mostly Italian) festivalgoersorganised outside Venice's Casino to choose the next festival director(it was 603 for Ching, 601 for Muller). But most international festivalhabitues agreed that Mueller had come up ...
-
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 ...
-
Reviews
Exodus
Dir: Penny Woolcock UK 2007. 110 mins.As much community project as feature film, Exodus transplants the Biblical story of Moses and the children of Israel to the depressed British seaside resort of Margate, in a dystopian future where racist politicians hold sway and asylum seekers are fenced inside a refugee ...
-
Reviews
Nightwatching
Dir: Peter Greenaway, Netherlands-Canada-Poland-UK. 140mins.Peter Greenaway takes The Night Watch - arguably Rembrandt's most famous painting, and certainly his most earnestly discussed and interpreted work - as the basis for a rambling, theatrical, frequently didactic study of a turning point in the Dutch painter's life. By turns both murder mystery, ...
-
Reviews
Chaos (Heya fawda)
Dir: Youssef Chahine France/Egypt 2007. 122 minsVeteran Egyptian director Youssef Chahine serves up a stirring, old-fashioned melodrama with a liberal conscience in his latest film, co-directed with his younger colleague Khaled Youssef. As imbued with the sounds, colours and passions of Cairo as a novel by Naguib Mahfouz, the film ...
-
Reviews
Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)
Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...