All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 44
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Reviews
In Memory of Myself (In Memoria di Me)
Dir: Saverio Costanzo. Italy. 2007. 116 mins.Slow-paced and austerely beautiful, the second feature by Italian auteur Saverio Costanzo takes on a subject that seems inherently uncinematic: the crisis of faith of a young man who is studying to become a priest in a Jesuit seminary in Venice. And yet Costanzo ...
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Reviews
Hounds (Jagdhunde)
Dir: Ann-Kristin Reyels. Germany. 2007. 87mins.It's not easy to be cute and bleak at the same time, but Hounds, the debut feature from Ann-Kristin Reyels, pulls it off. An edgily tender coming-of-age story, it lays the acerbic social observation of Mike Leigh over the gritty provincial realism of the brothers ...
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Reviews
When Darkness Falls (Nar Morkret Faller)
Dir: Anders Nilsson. Swe-Ger. 2006. 135mins.A dark Swedish three-parter, When Darkness Falls makes up in gritty energy and social conscience what it lacks in structural cohesion. It doesn't so much weave together its three stories about how people deal when threatened; it simply runs with each one for 10 minutes ...
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Reviews
I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK
Frustrating, whimsical, baffling and yet utterly original, Park Chan-Wook's new feature seems designed expressly to alienate those who were turned on to the Korean director by his revenge trilogy - Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Old Boy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. This tale of a psychologically fragile girl who thinks ...
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Reviews
Playing The Victim (Izobprzhaya Zhertvu)
Dir: Kiril Serebrennikov. Russ. 2006. 96mins.The surprise winner of the main Cinema2006 section of the Rome Film Fest, PlayingThe Victim is an intellectual, post- modern blackcomedy that has its engaging moments but ends up feeling gratingly pretentious.With a script adapted fromtheir own stage play by the prolific Brothers Presnyakov,this second ...
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Reviews
The Unknown (La Sconosciuta)
Dir/scr: Giuseppe Tornatore. It-Fr. 2006. 121mins.Giuseppe Tornatore hashardly set world cinema alight in the 18 years since the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso.But although it's far from perfect, TheUnknown, the Sicilian director's first film in six years at least has thedramatic substance that lacked in style exercises like Malena (2000) and The ...
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Reviews
The Stone Council (Le Concile De Pierre)
Dir: Guillaume Nicloux. Fr-Ger-It. 2006. 100mins.A French Da Vinci Code inwhich Catholic mystical hokum is replaced by Mongololianshamanistic hokum, Jean-Christophe Grange's Le Concille DePierre was a literary bestseller when it came out in France in 2000. Withits high-profile Bellucci-Deneuve pairing and lushproduction values, this $28m adaptation of the book is ...
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Reviews
L'Aria Salata
Dir: Alessandro Angelini. It. 2006. 88mins.Tight and tense, this debut feature by documentarydirector Alessandro Angelini is the first local buzztitle to have emerged from the inaugural Rome Film Fest. Telling the story of ayoung prison counsellor who discovers that his latest charge - a convictedmurderer - is the man who ...
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Reviews
The Go Master (Wu Qingyuan)
Dir: Tian Zhuangzhuang. Chi. 2006. 107mins.The latest feature from Fifth Generation Chinesefilm-maker Tian Zhuangzhuang,The Go Master is an austere, poeticstudy of one of the most famous 20th-century players of the Japanese board gameGo, considered the most complicated strategy game in the world. As reticent asits central character (played by Wong ...
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Reviews
Hoax
Dir: Lasse Hallstrom. US. 2006. 115mins.As struttingly confident asits main character, true-life literary fraudster Clifford Irving, The Hoax is far and away Lasse Hallstrom's best Americanfilm yet. Featuring a Richard Gere who has finallycast off his mid-term career doldrums to reveal himself as an actor ofMachiavellian charisma and authority, it ...
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Reviews
Napoleon And Me (Io E Napoleone)
Dir: Paolo Virzi. It-Fr-Sp. 2006. 110mins.The latest Eurozone attemptto find a new angle on the Napoleon story finally, Napoleon And Me allows Daniel Auteuil to pitch into a role which seems to have been cutout for an actor of his professional and physical stature. But this - and onesteamy love ...
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News
First Rome Film Fest adds more studio premieres
The Rome Film Fest hasannounced the line-up for its first edition, which runs from Oct 13-21. With atotal of 12 world premieres in its two main sections, the festival line-up hasgone some way towards disproving predictions that the newborn event would becrushed in the autumn festival logjam.In addition to opening ...
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News
Rome Festival sets 16 films for children's competition
The new Rome Film Fest (Oct 13-21)has announced its Alice in the City sidebar for children and young adults.The 16 feature films incompetition include Doug Atchison's spelling-bee drama Akeelah And The Bee, Jeremy Brock's UK coming-of-age story Driving Lessons and Michel Ocelot's animated fable Azur et Asmar. The selection alsoincludes ...
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Reviews
These Encounters Of Theirs (Quei Loro Incontri)
Dir/scr: Jean-MarieStraub and Daniele Huillet.It. 2006. 68mins.A profoundly uncommercialpiece of avant-garde filmmaking, Jean-Marie Straub and DanieleHuillet's TheseEncounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, thenhas them take turns in declaiming the DialoguesWith Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work. The result isfeature that has something of a cleansing (some would ...
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Reviews
The City Of Violence (Jjak-pae)
Dir: Ryoo Seung-wan. S Kor. 2006. 93mins.Action film-maker Ryoo Seong-wan takes a comparative step backwards from thepsychological complexity of last year's CryingFist with The City OfViolence, his latest outing, which pegs a series of appetisingly choreographedfight sequences onto a threadbare script.Co-produced by Korea's mainmartial arts school, the film seems more ...
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Reviews
Tales From Earthsea (Gedo Senki)
Dir: Goro Miyazaki. Jap. 2006. 114mins.Hayao Miyazaki has passed the director'smantle on to his son Goro for Tales From Earthsea,Studio Ghibli's latest feature-length 2D anime. Basedon the series of books by fantasy author Ursula Le Guin,this dragon and wizard yarn is drawn - at least as far as the backdrops ...
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Reviews
Bugmaster
Dir: Katsuhiro Otomo. Jap-US. 2006. 130mins.Japanese anime director Katsuhiro Otomomakes a curiously subdued, poetic foray into live-action cinema with his latestfeature, Bugmaster.Though the story's setting in the late Meiji era and its "invisible bug"infestation theme initially suggest a period horror along the lines of ShinyaTsukamoto's Gemini, the meditativepace, lonely but ...
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Reviews
Rob-B-Hood
Dir: Benny Chan. HK-Chi. 2006. 135mins.Jackie Chan returns to the broad Hong Kong comedyaction of earlier films like Meals On Wheels with the enjoyably ramshackle, fast-pacedbabysitting-crook yarn Rob-B-Hood.Laced with some classic stunts - a couple of them as inventive as anything Chanhas ever done - and action set-pieces, and canny ...
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Reviews
The Missing Star (La Stella Che Non C'e)
Dir: Gianni Amelio. It-Fr-Switz. 2006. 107mins.Gianni Amelio treads waterwith The Missing Star, an anti-hero quest moviethat has moments of emotional engagement but is marred by its genrefence-sitting and the muddiness of its final message. It's one of those filmswhose fascination lies not so much in the drama, whichis structured like ...
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Reviews
Golden Door (Nuovomondo)
Dir/scr: Emanuele Crialese. Fr-It. 2006. 118mins.A moving but unsentimental film of mythic resonance aboutthe early years of mass Italian immigration to the United States, The Golden Door consecrates Sicilian directorEmanuele Crialese as a film-makerof global significance after his promising earlier features, Once We Were Strangers (1997) and Respiro (2002). Turningthe ...