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All Sundance articles – Page 92
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Reviews
Phoebe in Wonderland
Dir/scr: Daniel Barnz. US. 2008. 96mins.In the lyrically compelling though dynamically flawed Phoebe in Wonderland, first-time feature director Daniel Barnz excites and frustrates in equal measure. His story of a dazzlingly smart young girl's personal liberation through her exposure to the Lewis Carroll masterpiece has moments of awe and ...
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Reviews
Blind Date
Dir: Stanley Tucci. US/Belgium/Holland. 2008. 85mins.The second of a planned trilogy of English-language remakes of films by the murdered Dutch provocateur Theo van Gogh, Stanley Tucci's Blind Date, about a man and woman who stage elaborate games in order to conceal the pain of a horrifying loss, is a ...
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Reviews
The Merry Gentleman
Dir: Michael Keaton. US. 2008. 110mins.In his directorial debut The Merry Gentleman, Michael Keaton reveals some of the same flair for the off-beat, moody and unconventional he has acutely demonstrated as an actor. He summons a wonderful performance by Kelly Macdonald and strong character distinction to the secondary players, ...
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Reviews
Bottle Shock
Dir. Randall Miller. US, 2008,112minsBottle Shock is a dramatization of a California winery's rise from obscurity to victory over French wines in a blind-tasting competition in France in 1973. It is based on a true story, and produced by friendly souls from the winemaking region North of San Francisco. ...
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Reviews
Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)
Dir: Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, US, 2008, 87mins.Even by the standards of independent documentaries, Ellen Kuras's Nerakhoon is the ne plus ultra of ultra-marathons. For her directorial debut, the cinematographer spent 23 years with the family of her co-director, Thavisook Phrasavath (Tavi), as Laotions settled in New York ...
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Reviews
Momma's Man
Dir: Azazel Jacobs. US. 2008. 94 mins.Azazel Jacobs' highly personal Momma's Man was a major discovery at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Artfully tracking the internal breakdown of a thirtysomething man, the film is both lyrical in its near wordless storytelling and humorous in its warm observation of human ...
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Reviews
The Wackness
Dir: Jonathan Levine. US. 2008. 110 mins.Having shown that he is a dab hand at teen horror in Toronto 2006 hit All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, Jonathan Levine proves that he can handle character-driven drama, albeit still of the teen variety, in his second film The Wackness. The audience ...
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Reviews
Assassination of a High School President
Dir: Brett Simon. US. 2008. 98mins.Brett Simon's Assassination of a High School President is a small and pleasant surprise. It's a mostly energetic satire of the sexual, social and political hierarchies of contemporary high school reconceived, like Rian Johnson's Brick, as a postmodern noir. Its throwaway accessibility makes it go ...
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Reviews
The Brøken
Dir/scr: Sean Ellis. UK/France. 2008. 88mins.In his second feature The Brøken the talented British director Sean Ellis (Cashback) traffics in a melange of styles and historical references that range from the poetic horror works of Jean Cocteau (Orpheus) to the social malaise and extreme alienation of Roman Polanski (The Tennant), ...
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Reviews
The Deal
Dir: Steven Schachter. Canada. 2008. 98mins.Completing an informal trilogy of Sundance titles about the making of movies (following Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind and Barry Levinson's What Just Happened'), Steven Schachter's The Deal is erratic and paper thin. Not a moment of it rings particularly true, and it never gathers ...
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Reviews
Baghead
Dir. Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass. USA, 2008, 84 minsIn this their second feature, the Duplass brothers have made a wildly funny parody of low-budget horror cinema, and created a bag-headed monster that has a no-budget franchise written all over it. Baghead should go right to the young audience that made ...
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Reviews
The King of Ping Pong (Ping-Pongkingen)
Dir: Jens Jonsson. Sweden. 2007. 107 mins.Growing pains in a cold climate: this formula has reaped handsome dividends for Nordic cinema in the past, most spectacularly for Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog, and more modestly for Dagur Kári's Icelandic art-house hit of 2003 Noi Albinoi. Swedish comedy-drama The ...
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Reviews
Transsiberian
Dir: Brad Anderson. US. 2008. 111 mins.The latest entry in Brad Anderson's increasingly fascinating oeuvre is an ambitious thriller set on the Transsiberian train from China to Moscow which recalls train-set thrillers from the 1970s like Silver Streak, The Cassandra Crossing and Murder On The Orient Express, not to mention ...
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Reviews
The Great Buck Howard
Dir: Sean McGinly. US. 2008. 87 minsThe Great Buck Howard is a well-made character piece which is so slight, good-natured and ever so slightly bland that it is likely to land in a commercial no man's land somewhere between the mainstream and the arthouse. Produced by Gary Goetzman and Tom ...
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Reviews
Donkey Punch (2007)
Dir. Olly Blackburn, 2007, UK, 90 minutesDonkey Punch, in young male slang, is a term for a hard blow to the back of the neck during sex, which produces a clench that gives pleasure to at least one person in a couple. This act kills a vacationing girl from Leeds ...
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Reviews
The Escapist
Dir: Rupert Wyatt. UK/Ireland. 2008. 105mins.In his debut feature The Escapist director Rupert Wyatt animates the virtues of the B-movie thriller - direct expression, taut construction and a stripped down psychology-with a more conceptually unorthodox narrative design that collapses time and space.In the script he wrote with Daniel Hardy, Wyatt ...
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News
River, Water take top prizes at Sundance Film Festival 08
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Hurricane Katrina tale Trouble The Water won the 2007 Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award and Courtney Hunt's tale of immigrant smuggling in Frozen River took the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic prize at the awards night ceremony in Park City on Saturday [Jan ...
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News
Manda Bala film-makers win Microsoft HDi Grant during Sundance
Director Jason Kohn and producer Jared Goldman received the Microsoft HDi Grant during the Sundance Film Festival last week from the Sundance Institute and Microsoft Corp for their 2007 festival entry Manda Bala (Send A Bullet).The prize is worth an estimated $100,000 and provides the film-makers with the resources to ...
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Reviews
Hamlet 2
Dir: Andrew Fleming. US. 2008. 92mins.Britain's Steve Coogan finally finds a US vehicle which effectively showcases his comedic talents in Hamlet 2, a more-hit-than-miss gagfest in which he plays a talentless high school drama teacher called Dana Marszh. Often wildly funny, this puerile romp was a welcome oasis of frivolity ...
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Reviews
The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
Dir: Rawson Marshall Thurber. US. 2008. 95minsPittsburgh in 1983 is the setting of this coming of age based on Michael Chabon's novel about a young man, entangled in affairs, breaks free from the rule of his mafia-boss father in the first summer of his adult life. A genre that's as ...