All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 47
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Reviews
Change Of Address (Changement D'Adresse)
Dir/scr: Emmanuel Mouret. Fr. 2006. 85mins.As light and frothy as a Feydeau farce, ChangeOf Address (Changement d'Adresse) is aParisian romantic comedy whose charm is all in its peppy performances and deft,old -school take on one of the oldest genres in the book. Halfway in tonebetween a Gallic take on the ...
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Reviews
Honor De Cavalleria
Dir/scr: Albert Serra. Sp. 2006. 112mins.Don Quixoteand his faithful servant Sancho Panzaare intriguingly lost in La Mancha in Honor De Cavalleria,Albert Serra's ultra-minimalist take on Cervantes'enduring classic, which allies itself militantly with an older generation of arthouse masters: Bresson, Pasolini, Olmi. Sadisticallyslow, the film demands a patience, which few at ...
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Reviews
The Bothersome Man (Den Brysomme Mannen)
Dir: JensLien. Nor-Ice. 2006. 95mins.A darkly comicNorwegian fable, The Bothersome Manimagines the after-life as a vacuous Scandinavian social democracy: it's theglossy dystopia of The Truman Showtransported to the land of designer sofas, 30-hour weeks and sweet blonde girlscalled Ingeborg. Lien's debut, the similarly quirky Johnny Vang,did only modest box office ...
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Reviews
Suburban Mayhem
Dir: Paul Goldman. Aus. 2006.89mins.A sassy but uneven slice of youth-oriented Australiana, SuburbanMayhem is worth seeing chiefly for its memorable main character, sexy,wilful and amoral suburban vamp Katrina, who is brought to vivid life by Kiwiactress Emma Barclay.But although it is carriedforward by a driving energy as loud as its ...
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Reviews
Back Home (Bled Number One)
Dir: Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche.Fr-Alg. 2005. 98mins.Algerian-born French director Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche confronts the problems of returnee Maghrebis with BackHome (as it is known in English), his follow-up tominor 2002 festival hit Wesh Wesh. The resultis a strange, loose exercise, part tradition-versus-modernity drama, partrambling filmed diary.Like its orange-hatted hero, the drama keeps switching ...
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Reviews
Re-Cycle
Directed by Danny & Oxide Pang. HongKong/Thailand 2006. 108 mins.ThisLin Sinjee vehicle is a calling card for the FarEastern special effects industry, creating a persuasively dark Alice Through the Looking Glass parallel universe with shadesof Terry Gilliam, Spirited Away and What Dreams May Come. Butthemoody fright-power of the Pang brothers' ...
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Reviews
Clerks II
If it ain'tbroke, milk it, as they say in Hollywood. So why did New Jersey homeboyKevin Smith wait all of 12 years before returning to the successfulsmall-town-buddies formula of his cult debut, Clerks' True, Smith has done stridentvariations on the theme - Mallrats -and lame spin-offs - Jay and Silent ...
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Reviews
Flandres
War isgrim; so is life in rural Flanders. That'sthe message most audiences are going to take from Bruno Dumont's love letter - oris it hate mail - to the area of north-eastern France where the director of L'Humanitewas born and still lives. Criticalreaction after Flandres' Cannes competition screeningwas split (as ...
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Reviews
A Scanner Darkly
Dir, Scr: Richard Linklater. USA 2006. 100 mins.Returning to the animated live-action technique of his 2001 philosophical doodle Waking Life, the hyper-productive Richard Linklater has come up with what must surely be the first sci-fi slacker movie. Based on Philip K Dick's cult novel of the same name, this ...
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Reviews
Drama/Mex
Dir/Scr: Gerardo Naranjo. Mexico 2006. 105 mins.A loose, choral drama that plays out over one hot night in Acapulco, Drama/Mex traces its line of influence back through Amores Perros and Gus Van Sant to early Truffaut.Shot in just three weeks, featuring mostly non-professional actors, this Cannes Critics' Week entry is ...
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Reviews
Southland Tales
Dir/scr: Richard Kelly. US. 2006. 140mins.Maybe SouthlandTales, Richard Kelly's long-awaited follow-up to cult sleeper Donnie Darko,will work as a multimedia project with publishing, music industry and websitetie-ins; it certainly doesn't hang together as a film. Multi-genre film-makingis always a challenge, and this futuristic black comedy musical thriller,larded with facile high-school ...
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Reviews
Shortbus
Dir/scr: John Cameron Mitchell.US.2006. 102mins.A film thatshows three men having no-holds-barred group sex while bawling out The Star-Spangled Banner at the top oftheir lungs is not going to delight the US censors - but John CameronMitchell's follow-up to Hedwig And The AngryInch has plenty to offer the rest of us. ...
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Reviews
Volevo Solo Vivere
Dir: Mimmo Calopresti. It. 2006. 82mins.Mimmo Calopresti'shomage to the almost 6,000 Italian Jews who died in Hitler's death camps, and the 837 who returned alive, Volevo Solo Vivere spins amoving story out of sensitively sifted and edited archive material.The archives used are thoseof the Shoah Foundation's Institute For Visual History ...
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Reviews
Poison Friends (Les Amitis Malefiques)
Dir: Emmanuel Bourdieu. Fr. 2006. 103mins.The theme of young male friendship gets a vigorousthough hardly ground-breaking workout in PoisonFriends, French screenwriter Emmanuel Bourdieu'ssecond directorial outing, which opened Critics' Week at Cannes. Though theprotagonists are already at university, this still qualifies as a coming-of-agemovie, which (not for the first time) shows ...
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Reviews
Hamaca Paraguaya
Dir/scr: Paz Encina. Fr-Arg-Hol-Par-Sp. 2006. 78mins.With a Cannesappearance (in Un Certain Regard) that makes it the first Paraguayan film to screenin the official selection of a major festival - and the only Paraguayan featureshot on 35mm in the last 30 years - HamacaParaguaya will delight those self-flagellatingcineastes who believe, like ...
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Reviews
Anche Libero Va Bene
Dir: Kim Rossi Stuart. It. 2006.104mins.Though it breaks no new ground, Anche Libero VaBene, Italian actor Kim Rossi Stuart'sdirectorial debut, restates the child's eye-view of family strife with suchemotional truth that it feels fresh.The film spends little timetrying to look pretty, and its kitchen-sink aesthetics, together with its deliberately untouristy ...
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Reviews
The Wedding Director (Il Regista Di Matrimoni)
Dir/scr: Marco Bellocchio. It. 2006. 102mins.After the compelling Red Brigade psycho-drama Good Morning, Night, Italian auteurMarco Bellocchio has returned to the hermetic,dreamlike mode of The Hour Of Religionwith his latest effort, in which a leading arthousedirector is talked into shooting a Sicilian wedding video. Occasionally comic,undeniably evocative, at times simmering ...
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Reviews
The Wedding Director (Il Regista Di Matrimoni)
Dir/scr: Marco Bellocchio. It. 2006. 102mins.After his compelling Red Brigade psycho-drama Good Morning, Night, Italian auteurMarco Bellocchio returns to the hermetic, dreamlikemode of The Hour Of Religion with hislatest effort, The Wedding Director, inwhich a leading arthouse film-maker is talked intoshooting a Sicilian matrimonial video.Bellocchio is a profoundly visual director, ...
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Reviews
The Caiman (Il Caimano)
Dir: Nanni Moretti. It-Fr. 2006. 112mins.Part impassioned political expose, part maritaldrama, part meta-cinematic comedy, Nanni Moretti's new film TheCaiman is a curious hybrid that, in most other hands, would feel forced. It'sthe director's intuitive command of tonal shifts - from slapstick to serious,from Allen-esque one-liners to barbed Moore-ish satire - ...