All articles by David D'Arcy – Page 18
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Reviews
Untraceable
Dir. Gregory Hoblit, US, 2008, 100 minsNeither terrifying nor inspiring, Untraceable is still a curious portrait of a society that struggles to police itself, under siege from one of its own children. The much-feared 'enemy within' that Cold Warriors railed about is now sitting at his basement computer and playing ...
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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
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
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 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 ...
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Reviews
Henry Poole Is Here
Dir: Mark Pellington. US. 2008. 100minsThe skeptical notion that ‘believing is seeing’ is put to rest in Henry Poole Is Here, a new twist on magic realism directed by Mark Pellington. Backyard miracles transform the life of a man who retreats from the world into a dull California suburb after ...
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Reviews
Death In Love
Dir: Boaz Yakin. 2008. US. 100min Boaz Yakin's dark drama is about the legacy of pain. We enter it through a smooth-talking scammer in Manhattan whose mother survived the Nazi camps thanks to a love affair with a doctor who experimented on prisoners. Death In Love shows that, as parents ...
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Reviews
Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden'
Dir: Morgan Spurlock. US. 2008. 93minsIn Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden', Morgan Spurlock super-sizes the scope of the one-man quest for truth and goes global, searching around the Middle East for the Al Qaeda leader with a $25 million price on his head. After sitting down with ...
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Reviews
Ballast
Dir-scr: Lance Hammer. US. 2008. 96mins.Ballast reminds us that you can find poetry in the unlikeliest and the saddest of places. The grim, grey and impoverished Mississippi Delta in winter is the setting and, to a great extent, the subject of the feature debut of writer-director-editor Lance Hammer. The spare ...
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Reviews
Good Dick
Dir: Marianna Palka. US. 2008. 85mins. Good Dick opens as an angry young woman rents pornographic films from a local video store, setting the clerk who serves her on a love-struck pursuit. The comedy takes us once again down a familiar Sundance road of neurotic losers in love, complete with ...
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Reviews
There Will Be Blood
Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson US, 2007. 158minsThere Will Be Blood is a vivid, sprawling parable about greed and moral corrosion. Set in the majestic American Southwest circa 1900, Paul Thomas Anderson's film will ride to the box-office largely on Daniel Day Lewis's volcanic performance as Daniel Plainview, the monstrous rags-to-riches ...
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Reviews
Southland Tales
Dir: Richard Kelly, USA, 2007, 144minsSouthland Tales, re-cut since its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, is apocalyptic vaudeville, as politicians, cops, Iraq veterans porn stars and an amnesiac actor scramble to fulfil or forestall conspiracies in Los Angeles, culminating in a world-ending Fourth of July. It's an ...
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Reviews
Dan In Real Life
Dir. Peter Hedges, USA, 2007, 99 minutes, colour, 35 mm.Dan in Real Life takes on a familiar character, the seemingly omniscient newspaper advice-giver (Steve Carell), whose family life as a widower with three daughters doesn't measure up to the wisdom of his daily columns. Dan's love life is even more ...
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Reviews
Battle for Haditha
Dir. Nick Broomfield . United Kingdom, 2007. 94 minsBattle for Haditha dramatises one of the most notorious atrocities of the Iraq War, the alleged massacre of 24 Iraqis by American marines in the city of Haditha on November 19, 2005 , for which five marines stand trial at Camp Pendleton ...