All Reviews articles – Page 702
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Reviews
The Wooden Camera
2003 Dir: Ntsuaveeni Wa Lurili. UK-Fr-South Africa. 90mins.Brazil has enjoyed five Oscar nominations thanks to City Of God, a tale of a camera-toting good guy caught in the crossfire of gang-warfare in Rio's favelas. The Wooden Camera, the story of a video-toting South African boy with choices to make, has ...
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Reviews
Mean Creek
Dir: Jacob Estes. US. 2004. 87mins.One of the hidden treasures at the Sundance Film Festival this year, Mean Creek is a haunting teenage take on Deliverance in which a prank turns to tragedy. Sombre, gripping and often painfully true in its evocation of teenage concerns, it marks a stunning directorial ...
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Reviews
Love In Thoughts
Dir. Achim von Borries. Germany. 2004. 90 mins.The latest film from Stefan Ardnt's and Tom Tykwer's X Filme creative pool, Love In Thoughts (Was Nuetzt Die Liebe In Gedanken) made its world debut in the Sundance Film Festival's Premiere section. Like a dark fairytale, the film paints an achingly beautiful ...
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Reviews
Aaltra
Directors: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Belgium. 2004. 90 mins.Tell people that a festival's hot ticket is a black-and-white Belgian road comedy, and you're liable to be greeted with scepticism, especially when the protagonists are two middle-aged men in wheelchairs. Nevertheless, Aaltra is this year's surprise delight at Rotterdam (where it ...
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Reviews
Asshak, Tales From The Sahara (Asshak, Geschichte Aus Der Sahara)
Dir: Ulrike Koch. Switzerland/Germany/Netherlands 2004. 110mins.Effectively an ethnographic documentary reinforced with a slender strand of narrative, Asshak is a generally engrossing portrait of the customs and beliefs of the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara. Given the current favour for films with an ethnographic and environmental slant, notably The Story Of ...
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Reviews
War (Vojna)
Dir: Jake Mahaffy. USA 2004. 84 mins.Virtually a one-man labour of love, Jake Mahaffy's War is one of those works that French critics sometimes term a 'UFO' - a film that comes out of nowhere, or comes direct and unmediated from its director's unconscious. Working over four years without no ...
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Reviews
Aaltra
Directors: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Belgium. 2004. 90 mins.Tell people that a festival's hot ticket is a black-and-white Belgian road comedy, and you're liable to be greeted with scepticism, especially when the protagonists are two middle-aged men in wheelchairs. Nevertheless, Aaltra is this year's surprise delight at Rotterdam (where it ...
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Reviews
Anatomy Of Hell (Anatomie De L'Enfer)
Dir: Catherine Breillat France 2004. 77mins.Forthright French director Catherine Breillat made her international breakthrough in 1999 with Romance, the centrepiece of a retrospective at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Breillat has returned to Rotterdam to premiere her tenth film Anatomy Of Hell, which takes Romance's sexual explorations even further, into territory ...
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Reviews
Maria Full Of Grace
Dir: Joshua Marston. US/Colombia. 2004. 101mins.Yet further confirmation that HBO Films is now the beating heart of US independent cinema, Maria Full Of Grace is a riveting portrait of drug mules transporting heroin from Colombia into the US which is as much intense thriller as it is powerful social comment.A ...
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Reviews
The Machinist
Dir: Brad Anderson. Spain/US. 2004. 98 mins.The Machinist is a sinister and unsettling psychological thriller which has cult favourite written all over it. It's Donnie Darko meets Kafka, Repulsion meets Safe. Talented US film-maker Brad Anderson (Session 9, Happy Accidents) takes the Cold War paranoia re-invading US society under the ...
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Reviews
Open Water
Dir: Chris Kentis. US. 2004. 79minsBased on a true story about a husband and wife who were accidentally left behind while scuba-diving 18 miles from shore, Open Water, which played in the American Spectrum sidebar at Sundance, is a bargain-basement scary movie that should more than repay its investment. What ...
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Reviews
Napoleon Dynamite
Dir: Jared Hess. US. 2004. 86mins.Napoleon Dynamite, which was met in Park City by raucous cheers and bursts of unsuppressed chuckling, is exactly the kind of off-beat comedy that delights otherwise earnest festivals such as Sundance. Within hours of its first screening, word on this occasionally-inspired portrait of Loserville, Idaho, ...
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Reviews
Super Size Me!
Dir: Morgan Spurlock. US. 2003. 98 minsSundance buyers were drawn to this highly entertaining documentary like kids to candy and Big Macs for good reason: director Morgan Spurlock does to McDonalds fast food what Michael Moore did to both General Motors and the National Rifle Association in his canonical documentary ...
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Reviews
The Woodsman
Dir: Nicole Kassel. US. 2004. 85mins.As Capturing The Friedmans made abundantly clear, there is no crime more heinous in the public imagination than paedophilia. So a dramatic feature that has a paedophile as its protagonist would seem to be engaging in taboo for taboo's sake. Which is why The Woodsman, ...
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Reviews
Employee Of The Month
Dir: Mitch Rouse. US. 2004. 97 mins.Few films deserved a slot in the Sundance Film Festival less than the repellent Employee Of The Month, a bungled attempt to blend gross-out comedy with double-cross heist thriller which had buyers walking out and audiences shaking their heads in dismay in Park City.Despite ...
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Reviews
The Silence Between Two Thoughts (Sokoote Beine Do Fekr )
Dir: Babak Payami. Iran. 2003. 88mins.There were three Iranian films at Venice last year; and all three were newsworthy. One (Hana Makhmalbaf's Joy Of Madness) because the director was only 14. Another (Abolfazl Jalili's The First Letter) because the director had been detained in Teheran by the authorities. And the ...
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Reviews
The Butterfly Effect
Dir: Eric Bress & J Mackye Gruber. US. 2004. 113mins.This efficient if wildly elaborate supernatural thriller, which world premiered at Sundance this week and opens through New Line on Jan 23, should be a moderate-to-strong moneyspinner for the studio which has become the home for smart, low-budget youth-oriented horror like ...
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Reviews
Stork Day (E Gia Ieri)
Dir: Giulio Manfredonia. Italy/Spain/UK. 2004. 94 mins.Why would anyone want to remake a film as unique as Groundhog Day' The only original thing about this bland, inoffensive attempt to do just that is the fact that it is a European remake of an American film. Producer Riccardo Tozzi's claim that ...
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Reviews
Easy
Dir. Jane Weinstock. US. 2003. 95mins.Despite a premiere at Toronto last autumn, followed by a competition slot at Sundance this month, Easy would do best to stay aware from the glare of film festivals. Given the right treatment, this romantic romp might land some deals, especially in secondary markets. But ...
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Reviews
Astronauts (Astronautas)
Dir: Santi Amodeo. 86mins. 2003. Spain.It's the same old story: if Astronauts (Astronautas) was set in Savannah rather than Seville and shot in English instead of lispy Spanish, this misleadingly-titled indie gem might take off. Instead, it is likely to follow in the wake of so many bygone but deserving ...