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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 38
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News
Critical comment: Literary adaptations
Cinema is the most confident and insecure of art forms. When it's on home ground, it's a strutting gang leader, but as soon as it meets one of the old bosses - literature, say, or theatre - it lies down and plays the doormat. And literature and theatre, for their ...
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ReviewsBroken Lines (2007)
Dir: Sallie Aprahamian. UK. 2008. 113mins.Immersed in the gritty multicultural realities and historical short-circuits of life in the northern suburb of Finsbury Park, Broken Lines is one of the rare films that nails the odd flavour of contemporary London. Like Shane Meadows’ recent Somers Town, it ...
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News
The critical view - Minority report
Can I say The Dark Knight is, in my opinion, not a very good film' I am puzzled and perturbed by the overwhelmingly positive critical response the film has attracted from fellow critics, especially in the US.Let me list my main objections to Christopher Nolan's latest 'masterpiece'.First, it is a ...
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News
The critical view: On the money
Critics rarely give much thought to the money side of the film industry. In fact, if I miss a film's national press preview or international festival debut, my desire to see it later, alongside a paying public, is generally in inverse proportion to its box-office success.This isn't just critical petulance ...
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Reviews
Eldorado
Dir/scr. Bouli Lanners. Belgium/France. 2008. 86 mins.A dysfunctional Belgian pair of Laurel and Hardy loners bond affectingly in Eldorado, Bouli Lanners' second directorial outing which picked up the Europa Cinemas Label and the FIPRESCI Quinzaine award at this year's Cannes festival. Visually striking and musically inventive, Eldorado doses out its ...
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Reviews
The Stranger In Me (Das Fremde In Mir)
Dir: Emily Atef. Germany. 2008. 99mins.One of the most powerful surviving social taboos - a mother's rejection of her new-born baby - is turned into a small but resonant drama in Emily Atef's second feature, which was one of the highlights of this year's Critic's Week in Cannes. With a ...
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ReviewsThe Pleasure Of Being Robbed
Dir: Josh Safdie. US. 2008. 68mins.A glance at the multi-tasking names in the credits is enough to show just how homemade New York film-maker Josh Safdie’s debut film is. And at just 68 minutes, it challenges the definition of full-length feature. But it would be a ...
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ReviewsPrivate Lessons (Eleve Libre)
Dir: Joachim Lafosse. Belgium-France. 2008. 105mins.Reunited with the same co-writer, the same crew and many of the same themes he explored in his 2006 Venice competion entry Private Property (Nue Propriete), buzzy Belgian auteur Joaquim Lafosse crafts another original, disturbing work which fails however to scale ...
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ReviewsThe Rest Of The Night (Il Resto Della Notte)
Dir/scr: Francesco Munzi. Italy. 2008. 103mins.Frederico Munzi lives up to the promise he showed in his debut Saimir with this dark multi-linear drama-thriller set amongst Italy’s new immigrant underclass. It’s a timely theme given the ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration by the country’s recently elected centre-right ...
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ReviewsThe Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza)
Dir/scr: Lucrecia Martel. Argentina-Spain-France-Italy. 2008. 87mins.
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Reviews
Blind Loves (Slepe Lasky)
Dir: Juraj Lehotsky.Slovakia. 2008. 76mins.A film its actors will never see, Blind Loves traces four blind people in theSlovakRepublicand investigates, in a seamless meld of documentary and fiction, how they experience love. Touching and original, this first full-length outing from documentary and music-video director Juraj Lehotsky ...
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ReviewsSalt Of This Sea (Milh Hadha Al-Bahr)
Dir/scr. Annemarie Jacir. France-Palestine-Switz-Belgium-USA-UK-Neth-Spain. 2008. 89mins.
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News
The critical view - Is niche cinema losing its hold on audiences'
Every so often we are told that audiences are ripe for a 'return to genre'. This is not just academic; genre-oriented production companies, such as Filmax in Spain, NoShame in Italy or Sahamongkol in Thailand, have money riding on our appetite for contemporary Euro-horror, hard-boiled Milanese crime classics or Muay ...