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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 44
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Reviews
Confession Of Pain (Seung sing)
Dirs: Andrew Lau, Alan Mak. HK. 2006. 116mins. The Infernal Affairs trilogy - and Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake, The Departed - turned Andrew Lau and Alan Mak into the golden boys of Hong Kong cinema. The directing duo followed up with the enjoyably lightweight teen racer yarn Initial D, which ...
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Reviews
Spider Lilies (Ci-Qing)
Dir/scr: Zero Chou. Tai. 2007. 97mins. Tempering the transgressive spirit of Almodovar with the innocent fantasies of Taiwanese teen melodrama, the girl-on-girl romance Spider Lilies is a watchable but rather lightweight follow-up to Zero Chou's well-received 2004 debut Splendid Float.With its casting of Taiwanese pop icon and TV personality Rainie ...
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Reviews
Itty Bitty Titty Committee
Dir: Jamie Babbit. US. 2007. 85mins. Naive and over-didactic, but still brimming with infectious energy and a sense of mission that's hard to hate, Jamie Babbit's third feature serves up radical lesbian feminism in teen-movie sauce. Actually, teens are generally more mature than this; Itty Bitty Titty Committee is like ...
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Reviews
Saturno Contro
Dir: Ferzan Ozpetek. It-Fr-Turk. 2007. 109mins. The problems of nine little people don't amount to a hill of beans in Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek's latest offering, Saturno Contro. Billed as a melancholy generational comedy, this occasionally affecting - but dramatically inert - feature deals with a close-knit circle of thirty- ...
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Features
In focus - Critical round-up - Potsdamer clamour
This may prove to have been the biggest Berlinale ever - in everything but film quality. The patchy selection of films in competition failed to ride the wave of success, and left critics muttering that the Berlinale would do better to refocus on its core business.True, there was a last-minute ...
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Reviews
Shelter (Riparo: Anis Fra Di Noi)
Dir: Marco Simon Puccioni. It-Fr. 2007. 105mins. A small, unpolished but involving drama of jealousy and social status, Shelter offers an interesting twist on the theme of the stranger who enters a family unit and exposes its faultlines. The unit in this case is a lesbian couple, and the stranger ...
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Reviews
Tekkonkinkreet
Dir: Michael Arias. Jap. 2007. 112mins. The first feature-length Japanese anime to be directed by a foreigner, the impressive Tekkonkinkreet has cult animation written all over it. It's a streetwise Spirited Away, darker, moodier and more adult-oriented than Miyazaki's masterwork, with an apocalyptic undercurrent that reminds one of the dark ...
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Reviews
Here's Looking At You, Boy
Dir/scr: Andre Schafer. Ger-Neth. 2007. 90mins. Billed as a documentary about 'the coming-out of queer cinema', and destined mostly for TV and DVD formats after further festival action, Here's Looking At You, Boy ticks most of the right boxes in its interviews-plus-film clips survey of the years when queer cinema ...
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Reviews
The Last Mimzy
Dir: Bob Shaye. US. 2007. 94mins. What on paper looked suspiciously like a vanity directing project by New Line supremo Bob Shaye turns out to be a quirky, New Age, eco-aware kids' sci-fi movie that plays well with young audiences - at least if the upbeat reaction from the Berlinale ...
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Reviews
I Served The King Of England (Obsluhoval Jsem Anglickeho Krale)
Dir: Jiri Menzel. Czech Rep-Slovak. 2007. 119mins. A likeable comic underdog saga that follows the life and loves of a Chaplinesque waiter in pre- and post-war Czechoslovakia, I Served the King of England represents veteran Czech director Jiri Menzel's most marketable feature for some time. The film's little-big-man protagonist and ...
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Reviews
2 Days In Paris
Dir: Julie Delpy. France/Germany 2006. 96 mins.Yes, it's another film in which Julie Delpy walks around Paris with an American guy talking about relationships. But despite the surface similarities, the French actress-singer-scriptwriter's first commercial film as director (she herself has described her first feature, the no-budget Looking For Jimmy, as ...
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Reviews
The Other (El Otro)
Dir: Ariel Rotter. Argentina/France/Germany. 84 mins.A city lawyer's mid-life crisis becomes an existential odyssey in Ariel Rotter's second feature. Politely received at its Berlinale press showing, this competition entry is intriguing and thought-provoking without ever being truly involving. There is much to admire in the formal devices that the film ...
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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 ...