All articles by John Hazelton – Page 26
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Reviews
Impostor
Dir: Gary Fleder. US. 2001. 95 mins. With a McCarthy-era literary pedigree and thinking man's hunk Gary Sinese producing as well as starring, it's no surprise that Impostor is a sci-fi thriller more concerned with the genre's intellectual than visceral possibilities. Yet while the story offers some interesting topical parallels ...
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Reviews
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Dir: John A Davis. US. 2001. 92 mins.Viacom has loaded a lot of responsibility onto the computer-animated shoulders of Jimmy Neutron. Intended as the basis for a "multi-platform franchise", the character has been popping up for the past 10 months on Viacom's Nickelodeon channel in preparation for a feature debut ...
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News
Not Another Teen Movie
Not Another Teen MovieReviewed by John Hazelton in Los AngelesDir: Joel Gallen. US. 2001. 82mins. A genre spoof aimed, apparently, at both teens and twentysomethings, Not Another Teen Movie hits its barn door of a target just often enough, although never with much style or wit. A handful of raunchy ...
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Reviews
Black Knight
Dir: Gil Junger. US. 2001. 93 mins. After the commercial disappointment of his team-up with Danny DeVito in What's the Worst That Could Happen', Black Knight sees comedian Martin Lawrence returning to the kind of solo shtick that turned his 2000 vehicle Big Momma's House (another Regency Enterprises production for ...
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Reviews
The One
The OneDir: James Wong. US. 2001. 80mins. The One offers a double dose of Asian martial arts star Jet Li but shortchanges its audience in just about every other department. After the promising box office showings in the US of last year's Romeo Must Die ($56m) and this past summer's ...
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Reviews
Thirteen Ghosts
Dir: Steve Beck. US. 2001. 90 mins. The ghouls are the title characters but the elaborate set is the real star of Thirteen Ghosts, a one-note, yet efficiently jolting Halloween offering from Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis' mid-budget horror label Dark Castle Entertainment. Re-made (like Dark Castle's Halloween '99 release ...
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Reviews
Bones
Dir: Ernest Dickerson. US. 2001. 90 mins. Its touches of social conscience aside, Bones is the sort of horror nonsense that only really thrill-starved pre-Halloween filmgoers can be expected to swallow. Featuring rapper Snoop Dogg in his first starring role and boosted by a soundtrack that has already entered the ...
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Reviews
Iron Monkey
Dir: Yuen Wo Ping. Hong Kong. 1993. 87 mins. Made in 1993 by Hong Kong action masters Tsui Hark and Yuen Wo Ping, Iron Monkey is considered a modern classic by many martial arts movie aficionados. Miramax's release in North and South America of a spruced up version of the ...
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Reviews
Max Keeble's Big Move
Dir: Tim Hill. US. 2001. 80 mins. Disney's latest live-action family film is a kid-centric and pleasantly rambunctious junior high school comedy that delivers its life lessons without losing its sense of fun. Pre-teens and parents should give the film a decent start at the box-office - perhaps more than ...
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News
Hardball
Dir: Brian Robbins. US. 2001. 106 mins. Set around a scruffy baseball diamond in a tough black neighbourhood of Chicago, Hardball is essentially a re-casting of seventies hit The Bad News Bears with less comedy and considerably more urban grit. As a family-oriented drama, it efficiently delivers its uplifting message ...
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Reviews
The Musketeer
Dir: Peter Hyams. US. 2001. 104mins. Though it boasts a potentially interesting international cast and a couple of acrobatic action scenes, The Musketeer is for the most part a muddled and forgettable new version of the classic Alexandre Dumas tale (more usually presented, of course, as The Three Musketeers) that ...
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Reviews
Jeepers Creepers
Dir: Victor Salva. US. 2001. 90 mins.There's a refreshing innocence to Jeepers Creepers, a stylish horror-thriller from Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope that indulges in the odd knowing genre joke but puts most of its energy into delivering good old-fashioned B-movie thrills. Teens raised on Scream and its imitators might ...
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News
US studios protected from online competition
Hollywood studios planning to sell online movie downloads got good news last week in a report by the US Copyright Office on the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act The report, requested by Congress to assess the effects of the Act, saw no need to extend the so-called 'first-sale doctrine' to ...
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News
Warner gets distribution of New Line in Germany
New Line Cinema has confirmed that it is finalising a deal for German distribution of its films through 2002 and 2003 with sister company Warner Bros. The arrangement will replace New Line's current German deal with financially troubled independent Kinowelt. The Kinowelt deal expires at the end of this year ...
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News
Beattie joins Lewis Horowitz Organisation
Los Angeles-based film finance operation The Lewis Horowitz Organization (LHO) has named former Equicap Financial Corporation executive Robert Beattie as its new Canadian representative. Beattie will be based in Vancouver, British Columbia. LHO founder and president Lew Horowitz said Beattie's presence in Vancouver will "significantly increase our ability to assist ...
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News
Moore heads Fox's theatrical and home video units
Twentieth Century Fox has united its international theatrical and international home video units under the supervision of Stephen Moore, president of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment International for the past four years. In his new position as president of Twentieth Century Fox International, Moore will continue to oversee the international ...
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News
Lions Gate gets US rights for The Grey Zone
Lions Gate Films has acquired all North American rights to Millenium Films' The Grey Zone, which is set for its world premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.Directed by Tim Blake Nelson and based on his own award-winning Off Broadway play, The Grey Zone is a drama, set ...
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Reviews
Summer Catch
Dir: Mike Tollin. US. 2001. 104mins. Summer Catch tries to cover a lot of bases: part baseball drama, part bawdy jock romp and part star-crossed romance, it ends up feeling like an Identikit summer movie. An attractive cast led by Freddie Prinze Jr might incite enough audience interest for a ...
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Reviews
Ghosts Of Mars
Dir: John Carpenter. US. 2001. 98 mins. A sci-fi/horror yarn with a touch of Western thrown in, Ghosts Of Mars has the kind of cheerful genre tackiness that we've come to expect lately from the John Carpenter 'brand.' What it doesn't have, in sufficient quantity at least, is the sort ...
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Reviews
Osmosis Jones
Dirs: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly; anim dirs: Piet Kroon, Tom Sito. US. 2001. 98 mins.The Farrelly brothers and Bill Murray are the names that jump out of the credits, that promising-sounding combination plays a relatively minor role in Osmosis Jones, an animated/live action comedy that represents Warner's latest attempt to ...