All articles by Patrick Z McGavin – Page 6
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Reviews
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Dir/scr GoranDukic. US. 2006.91mins.Croatian director Goran Dukic's endearingly oddball Wristcutters: A Love Story is a strange, somewhat unaccountable mess sharpenedby a brainy conceit and some wonderfully underplayed acting.It's an overstuffed roadmovie brimming with ideas and feeling about a lost world of disaffected souls. Steepedin a mordant black humour about suicide ...
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Reviews
Little Red Flowers (Kan shang qu hen mei)
Dir. Zhang Yuan. China.2006. 92mins.In the droll Little Red Flowers, eccentric Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuanshapes a comically alive, delicately observed adaptation of theautobiographical novel by Wang Shuo.It plays like a Chinese Zero For Conduct:a sharply etched, emotionally precise account of an incorrigiblefour-year-child's year spent at a kindergarten boarding school.If ...
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Reviews
Solo Dios Sabe
Dir/scr: Carlos Bolado. Mex-Braz. 2006. 114mins.Former editor Carlos Bolado- best known for his work on Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate - makes an overlyambitious piece with Solo Dios Sabe which, premiered inthe world dramatic competition at Sundance.Despite a promising start, itultimately proves too overextended for its own good, despite ...
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Reviews
Open Window
Dir/scr: Mia Goldman. US. 2006. 98mins.Debut film-maker Mia Goldman uses the intelligent andtroubling Open Window to explore the ramifications- physical, psychological and emotional - of a sexual assault upon a young woman.In the process, she denies the audience the visceral satisfaction of vengeance,opting instead for helplessness, defeat and inadequacy. It ...
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Reviews
God Grew Tired Of Us
Dir. Christopher Quinn. US. 2006. 86minsAn emotionally absorbing documentary from ChristopherQuinn, God Grew Tired Of Us is apiece that demands another telling of the genocidalSudanese civil war and the horrifying emotional and physical conditions itinflicted on its thousands of battered survivors.It also stands as an ablecompanion piece to Megan Mylan ...
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Reviews
Annapolis
Dir. Justin Lin. US. 2006. 103mins.Justin Lin's studio debut, Annapolis is a peculiarly engineered piece of Reagan-style swaggercouched in the form of popular entertainment. It ends with the sound ofmilitary drumbeat - and audiences are likely to feel bludgeoned by what hasgone before.It is capably ifdistractedly made, though it has ...
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Reviews
A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints
Dir/scr: Dito Montiel. US.2006.103mins.Adapting his 2003 memoir of the same title, debut writer-directorDito Montiel reveals himselfas a promising new voice in American cinema with A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, a featurethat summons the sting of memory, evoked in moments simultaneously fond, joyous,bitter, sad and tragic.Despite a problematic start -a ...
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Reviews
The Hawk Is Dying
Dir: Julian Goldberger. US. 2006. 112mins.The second featurefrom Julian Goldberger after his 1999 work Trans,The Hawk Is Dying is an admirable thoughfailed effort to graft the film-maker's poetic aesthetic to the demands of narrativefilm-making.A meditation on the thin veneer between obsession and madness, it has somesharp visual interludes and neat ...
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Reviews
The Night Listener
Dir: Patrick Stettner. US. 2006. 90mins.Robin Williams' great talent for mimicry,improvisation and change of pace has yielded some resourceful and inspired performancesin his comically inflected films. But in recent years his work has turned inward,with results that have been bluntly predictable and mannered: witness hisappearances in Insomnia, One Hour Photo ...
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Reviews
The New World
Dir/scr: Terrence Malick. US. 2005. 150mins.A sweeping historical narrative and exquisitely renderedlove story, Terrence Malick's The New World is a majestic, electrifying feature experience that forsome will rank as the most artistically accomplished US studio release this year.Demanding and complex, it possessesextraordinary beauty and comes close to silent cinema, with ...
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Reviews
Hostel
Dir: Eli Roth. US. 2005.95mins.A serpentine thriller likely to both repulse andexcite, Roth's second feature - and follow-up to Cabin Fever - plays like a shotgun marriage of Eurotripand Saw, starting out confidently as an European road sex adventure beforedevolving into a mutilation splatter flick.It is not always easy totake, ...
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Reviews
The Libertine
Dir. Laurence Dunmore. UK. 2005. 114mins.Resurfacing 14 months after its Toronto premiere as awork in progress, The Libertine hasnot improved with time, even after an extra year in the editing suite.Despite a sharp bounce fromJohnny Depp's deliciously suggestive performance as the titular Earl ofRochester, Laurence Dunmore's debut feature feels lacklustre ...
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Reviews
Sorry, Haters
Dir/scr: Jeff Stanzler. US. 2005. 84mins.Jeff Stanzler's ambitious,unsettling second feature, Sorry, Hatersdeals in some disturbing imagery and visceral contemporary relevance,attempting to say something provocative about US culture and its frayed socialfabric in the wake of September 11.Unfortunately, its Hitchcockian treatment of sin, guilt and transferenceproduces a dramatic imbalance that undermines ...
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Reviews
The Ice Harvest
Dir. Harold Ramis. US. 2005. 88mins.After the fairly impersonal work he delivered on hisrecent studio assignments (Analyze That, the Bedazzledremake), Harold Ramis returns to the offbeat,anti-social observational humour his talent thrives on with The Ice Harvest.Told in a clipped, rakishstyle and suffused in a low-key sleaze, it makes for an ...
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Reviews
Jarhead
Dir. Sam Mendes. US. 2005. 120mins.Technically strong and well performed,the visually accomplished Jarhead isa complex, mournful meditation on war and its consequences that director SamMendes also manages to inject with a bracing emotional immediacy.For Mendes himself it alsoanswers some of the criticisms he drew with RoadTo Perdition, regarded by some ...
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Reviews
The Weather Man
Dir. Gore Verbinski. US. 2005.102mins.TheWeather Man is clearly a transitional work for director Gore Verbinski, a modestly budgeted, comically inflected dramamore alert to writing, character detail and social portrait than the stylisedvisual flamboyance and mannered comic performances of the likes of Pirates Of TheCaribbean.Starring Nicolas Cage as aman attempting to ...
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Reviews
Feast
Dir. John Gulager. US. 2005. 80mins.The third instalment from the Project Greenlight program, John Gulager's Feastis a stripped down, grungy exercise in blood and gore that agreeably satisfiesthe expectations of the horror movie without transcending or ever slylysubverting the material.The fantastic premise ofreality show Project Greenlight(originally shown on US cable ...
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Reviews
Slow Burn
Dir/scr: Wayne Beach. US. 2005. 93mins.A debut feature directed and written by Wayne Beach, Slow Burn is too reminiscent of The Usual Suspects for its own good, andas such seems more likely to end up at the neighbourhood video store than the nearestmultiplex.It's a tricked out mystery, though rather than ...
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Reviews
Harsh Times
Dir: David Ayer. US.2005. 119mins.David Ayer's HarshTimes is a corrosive, frequently riveting social portrait on friendship,damaged masculinity and the dread of violence. The debut feature from thetalented screenwriter of Training Day, the movie is flawed and sometimesoverreaches though it is given a propulsive kick from Christian Bale's searingMethod performance.A genre ...
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Reviews
The Regular Lovers (Les Amants Reguliers)
Dir:Philippe Garrel. Fr. 2005. 183minsFrench director PhilippeGarrel makes unclassifiable movies that play to highly discerning tastes. Hisexquisite new feature, The Regular Lovers, a three-hour black-and-whitemeditation on love, passion and the personal and political ramifications of theevents of May 1968, is a strikingly original and challenging piece of work.Even with its ...