All articles by Peter Brunette – Page 2
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Reviews
Deficit
Dir: Gael Garcia Bernal. Mex. 2007. 75 minutes. If sincere commitment and high spirits were enough, this first film by the supremely accomplished - even though still quite young - Mexican actor and heartthrob, Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Motorcycle Diaries, Bad Education) would be a masterpiece. Alas, ...
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Reviews
Silent Light (Stellet Licht)
Dir: Carlos Reygadas. Mex-Fr-Neth. 2007. 142 mins.Mexican auteurist Carlos Reygadas has lost nothing of the aesthetic austerity so magnificently, if exhaustingly, on display in his first two films, Japon (2002) and Battle In Heaven (2005). Both of those films proved exceptionally demanding on audiences, both narratively and psychologically, but for ...
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Reviews
Garage
Dir: Lenny Abrahamson. Ir. 2007. 85 mins.Calling Garage a 'small' film would be true enough, but the Hope diamond, all things considered, is awfully small as well. Both, in any case, are gems. The second feature of director Lenny Abrahamson, following his well-received debut film Adam & Paul, which won ...
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Reviews
Import Export
Dir: Ulrich Seidl. Aust. 2007. 135 mins.Very much in the vein of his best-known film, Dog Days (2001), Austrian auteur and documentarian Ulrich Seidl continues in this, his first fiction film in 6 years, to explore the darker aspects of human existence. His unremittingly depressing view of the human condition ...
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Reviews
To Each His Own Cinema (Chacun Son Cinema)
Dir: 35 leading directors. Fr. 2007. 120minsConceived as a homage to the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, this improbable congeries and potentially incoherent work of cinema (35 different directors making three-minute shorts about the movie-going experience and their own introduction to the world of film) is surprisingly successful. ...
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Reviews
Borderland
Dir: Zev Berman. US. 2007. 104mins. A solidly professional exercise in the horror/thriller genre, Borderland will not disappoint those that like their suspense and gore laid on in equal measure, and nice and thick. Still, it doesn't rise significantly above other examples of the genre, and a commercial release in ...
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Reviews
Elvis And Anabelle
Dir/scr: Will Geiger. US. 2007. 98mins. A warm-hearted and always smoothly-functioning depiction of small-town Texas life, Elvis And Anabelle is sweet-natured but lacks enough grit to push it beyond the DVD shelf. It's an offbeat love story, with a hint of the otherworldly about it, and the script and the ...
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Reviews
Blackbird
Dir/scr: Adam Rapp. US. 2007. 108 minutes. Screening in the Narrative Features Competition at Austin's SXSW Festival, this depressing film treads a well-worn path. Its familiar story features a 32-year-old heroin-addicted Marine veteran named Bayliss (Sparks) who meets another addict, a 16-year-old runaway from Detroit named 'Froggy' (Jacobs) at the ...
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Reviews
He Was A Quiet Man
Dir: Frank Cappello. US. 2007. 100 minutes. Screening in the Spotlight Premiere section of SXSW, He Was A Quiet Man is an excellent, unpredictable and often extremely witty film that is, alas, going to have a difficult time finding an audience. A dark comedy that is really quite comic but ...
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Reviews
The Prisoner Or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair
Dir: Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein. US, 2007. 72 minutes. Shown in the Spotlight Premieres section of SXSW Festival, The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair is a powerfully moving documentary about one Iraqi man's mistreatment at the hands of the US military in that infamous hellhole ...
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Reviews
Suffering Man's Charity
Dir: Alan Cumming. USA. 2007. 92 mins Suffering Man's Charity is one of those films that attempts to hide humourless and cruelty behind the generic label 'black comedy'. Instead of being funny, it is rather a relentless harangue, an assault of over-the-top acting that attempts to disguise or make up ...
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Reviews
Knocked Up
Dir/scr: Judd Apatow. US, 2007. 126 mins. In 2005, Judd Apatow scored big with the surprise hit, The 40-Year Old Virgin, which, with its novel combination of gross-out elements and old-fashioned, recognisably human emotion, earned critical plaudits and went on to do some $177m box-office world-wide. With his new film, ...
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Reviews
Sisters
Dir: Douglas Buck. US. 2007. 92 mins.When will filmmakers ever learn how risky it is to re-make a classic, especially when it's in the same language' Does it take a special form of hubristic death-wish to deliberately invite comparisons between your film and that of an acknowledged master of horror ...
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Reviews
Flakes
Dir: Michael Lehmann. US. 2007. 83 mins. Flakes starts well and full of pep, but is one of those 'high concept' indie films that fatally loses steam after the first 20 minutes, once the basic premise - dueling cereal restaurants, one a laid-back, funky hippie operation and the other an ...
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Reviews
The Lookout
Dir/Scr: Scott Frank. US. 2007. 99 mins. Opening Night Film at the SXSW Film Festival, The Lookout is the directorial debut of Oscar-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank (Out Of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report, The Interpreter and Little Man Tate). A somewhat uneven, but always engaging film, The Lookout is set ...
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Reviews
The White Planet (La Planete Blanche)
Dir: Thierry Piantanida,Thierry Ragobert, Jean Lemire.Can-Fr. 2006. 86mins.The White Planet triesits best to repeat the magic of March Of The Penguins, which became a surprise worldwide hitdespite being a documentary about penguins. Unfortunately, it doesn't quitemake the grade. Though a handful of powerful images rise up occasionally toreclaim the audience's ...
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Reviews
The Fall
Dir: Tarsem. 2006. India/UK/US. 117mins.Surely the most visuallyawe-inspiring film at the Toronto film festival this year, music video directorTarsem's The Fall will divide mostaudiences. Patient viewers, however, will be richly rewarded by a visual andaural extravanganza that is virtually sui generis. Think the brilliant andexciting images of Julie Taymor in ...
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Reviews
Un Crime
Dir: Manuel Pradal. France. 2006. 110mins.Manuel Pradal,whose 1997 debut film Marie Baie DesAnges won universal plaudits, has unwisely decided to attempt a full-scalefilm noir for his third film. Set in NewYork City, Un Crime stars thenormally superb Emmanuelle Beart and Harvey Keitel, but there's littleconvincing chemistry between them, and even ...
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Reviews
Un Crime
Dir: Manuel Pradal. France. 2006. 110mins.Manuel Pradal,whose 1997 debut film Marie Baie DesAnges won universal plaudits, has unwisely decided to attempt a full-scalefilm noir for his third film. Set in NewYork City, Un Crime stars thenormally superb Emmanuelle Beart and Harvey Keitel, but there's littleconvincing chemistry between them, and even ...