All Toronto articles – Page 154
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Reviews
The Passage
Dir: Mark Heller 2007 USA . 95 mins.A likable cast and the exotic backdrop of Morocco provides first-time feature director Mark Heller with the tools to make a tense thriller about Western tourists in danger but he fails to build much-needed suspense. While pretty to watch, The Passage never scares ...
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Reviews
Young People Fucking
Dir: Martin Gero. Canada, 2007. 91 MinsYoung People Fucking is quite clearly a title that's out to grab one's attention. Neither documentary nor hardcore, it's an ingeniously constructed pastiche of sexual encounters presented affectionately and with humour. Reminiscent of American independent movies of the 1980s, the film should really be ...
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Reviews
Gone with the Woman (Tatt av Kvinnen)
Dir. Peter Naess. Sweden/Norway 2007. 92 min.Picked by Norway to carry its flag at the Oscars this year, Peter Naess' new screwball romance takes off a vivacious, though rather misogynistic tone, but soon settles down to a pedestrian pace which it follows the rest of the way. Naess, whose irreverent ...
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Reviews
Glass
Dir: Scott Hicks. Australia . 2007. 122mins.The critical relationship of subject to filmmaker is the tipping point for most documentary portraits. It is the primary distinction between a probing and objective analysis and hagiography. In Scott Hicks' Glass, the composer Philip Glass has allowed the director unmediated exposure to his ...
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Reviews
Normal
Dir. Carl Bessai. Canada . 2007. 100 min.With Normal , Canadian filmmaker Carl Bessai delivers his most accomplished film yet. An intense psychological portrait of lives shattered by a sudden death, it does everything well. Although it explores familiar terrain - comparisons with the daisy-chain of Paul Haggis' Crash are ...
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Reviews
Rails & Ties
Dir. Alison Eastwood. US, 2007. 96 mins.The feature-film directorial debut of Clint Eastwood's 35-year-old actress daughter, Alison Eastwood, Rails & Ties is an always serviceable, professionally accomplished film. Unfortunately, its ambitions are hampered by a central situation that is redolent of too many made-for-TV films, as well as by implausible ...
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Reviews
Man From Plains
Dir. Jonathan Demme. US 2007. 125 mins.Man from Plains follows the former US president Jimmy Carter from his sprawling family peanut farm in southern Georgia to a national book tour on which the earnest man who brokered the Camp David Accords defends his controversial view that Israel imposes rules akin ...
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Reviews
Shake Hands with the Devil
Dir. Roger Spottiswoode. Canada 2007, 113 Mins.The tragic recent history that informed Hotel Rwanda is viewed from another angle in Shake Hands with the Devil. Viewed from the perspective of General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded United Nations forces during the 1993 crisis, it paints a picture of broader dimension that ...
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Reviews
Erik Nietzsche - The Early Years (Erik Nietzsche - De Unge Ar)
Dir.Jacob Thuesen. Denmark . 2007. 91 min.Lars von Trier's revenge on the Danish film industry is a very funny inside joke. A not-so-fond evisceration of film school, filmmakers, actors (more precisely oversexed Danish actresses), technicians, guilds and unions, the picaresque film follows its eponymous hero through a circus of cinema-related ...
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Reviews
Shadows
Dir/Scr: Milcho Manchevski. Macedonia 2007. 120mins.A ghost story that draws on the irrational to explore the historical and cultural redress of displaced Macedonians, Milcho Manchevski's third feature Shadows is ambitious and capably mounted. However it is too fastidious for its own good, and is damaged by dramatically contradictory parts that ...
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Reviews
Love Comes Lately
Dir. Jan Schutte. Germany/Austria/US 2007. 86 min.Jan Schutte's adaptation of three short-stories by the Yiddish writer and Nobel-prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer will attract mostly mature audiences who will identify with its central character, octogenarian writer Max Kohn. Like most adaptations of works by great authors, the picture faces the ...
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Reviews
Reclaim Your Brain (Free Rainer-Dein Fernseher Lugt)
Dir. Hans Weingartner. Germany . 2007. 132 minsAnyone who has ever railed against the pernicious poison of reality television should derive a scattering of wry chuckles from Reclaim Your Brain, a Capra-esque call to arms from writer/director Hans Weingartner. Taking aim at some obvious targets, it is slow to warm ...
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Reviews
The Take
Dir: Brad Furman. US 2007. 96 mins.The Take is a potentially very interesting film that suffers from a bad case of bi-polar disorder. On the one hand, a gritty, often exciting crime-and-caper movie, and on the other hand an authentic-feeling domestic drama set in one of the Latino barrios of ...
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Reviews
Dainipponjin
Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto. Japan, 2007.With similar credentials to those Takeshi Kitano had before he made movies, but determined to take a different approach for his debut, Hitoshi Matsumoto looks set to establish a reputation as a quirky, bizarre type of humourist. His first film should qualify with equal ease for ...
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Reviews
The Babysitters
Dir. David Ross. US. 2007. 90mins.First time director David Ross negotiates a precarious line between exploitation and provocation with The Babysitters, the story of a bright and industrious teenager who fronts a high school escort service for bored suburban men. It inverts the story of Risky Business, moving away from ...
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Reviews
Poor Boy's Game
Dir. Clement Virgo. Canada , 2007. 102 Mins.Racial tension in an unusual setting and a quiet, authoritative voice pack a surprising punch in Poor Boy's Game, a new film from Afro-Canadian filmmaker Clement Virgo. Though framed around a grudge match in the boxing ring, the film has a considerably broader ...