All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 45
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News
Jia's Still Life is surprise winner of Venice's Golden Lion
Still Life (Sanxia Haoren), thelast-minute competition entry by cult Chinese director JiaZhangke, was the surprise winner of the Golden Lionfor Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. Added to the list of 21 competitionfilms halfway through the 12-day Italian festival, Zhangke'sfifth feature, with a slow pace and near absence of ...
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Reviews
The Magic Flute (La Flute Enchantee)
Dir: Kenneth Branagh. UK.2006. 137mins.Can filmed opera attract a multiplex audience'Probably not, but Kenneth Branagh's sumptuous newversion of The Magic Flute comes asclose to crossover as a meeting of these two great light-and-sound artforms ever will. Any exercise in this hybrid genre hasto deal with the question of how to ...
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Reviews
Inland Empire
Dir/scr: David Lynch. US-Fr-Pol. 2006. 189mins.Around 10 minutes into INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch's baffling new cinematic mindgame,a guy with the head of a rabbit drones: "I do not think it will be much longernow". Wrong, bunny: it will be another two hours and 50 minutes of improvisedplotting, rumbling sound effects ...
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Reviews
Dry Season (Daratt)
Dir/scr: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Fr-Bel-Chad-Aust. 2006. 95mins.The third feature from Mahamat-SalehHaroun, the director of Bye Bye Africa (at Venice in 1999) and Abouna (which wasat Cannes in 2002), is a pared-back revenge tale with a twist, set against thebackground of the long trail of civil and ethnic strife in Haroun'snative Chad.One ...
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Reviews
THE INLAND EMPIRE
Dir/scr: David Lynch. US-Fr-Pol. 2006. 189mins.Around 10 minutes into INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch's baffling new cinematic mindgame,a guy with the head of a rabbit drones: "I do not think it will be much longernow". Wrong, bunny: it will be another two hours and 50 minutes of improvisedplotting, rumbling sound effects ...
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Reviews
Paprika
Dir: Satoshi Kon. Japan2006. 90mins.Satoshi Kon proves againwith the teen- and adult-oriented feature Paprikajust why he is one of the most interesting anime Japanese directors right now.On the evidence here it's easy to see why his work, rather than the more conventionalTales Of Earthsea - directed by HiyakiMiyazaki's son Goro ...
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Reviews
The Hottest State
Dir/scr: Ethan Hawke. US. 2006. 116mins.Films about first love are a bit like films aboutdrugs: they risk being more interesting for those involved than for theaudience. But The Hottest State -which screened in Horizons at Venice - has the grace and resilience to charm audiences,grounding its potentially self-indulgent tale into ...
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Reviews
Bobby
Dir/scr: Emilio Estevez. US.2006. 119mins.Actor-director Emilio Estevez makes a convincing return to featuredirection with Bobby, an all-starchoral drama set in Los Angeles' Hotel Ambassador on the day Democraticcandidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated there. True, it is not one of those auteurist multi- strand films like Magnolia that provokes and challenges ...
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Reviews
The Fountain
Dir: Darren Aronofsky. US. 2006. 96mins.Something of a feature-length New Age doodle, The Fountain will alienate many of thosewho were turned on to indie director Darren Aronfosky by his quirky debut Pi and its follow-up, the drug-fuelled cinematic opera Requiem For A Dream. Threading its epiclove story through three time ...
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Reviews
The Fountain
Dir: Darren Aronofsky. US. 2006. 96mins.Something of a feature-length New Age doodle, The Fountain will alienate many of thosewho were turned on to indie director Darren Aronfosky by his quirky debut Pi and its follow-up, the drug-fuelled cinematic opera Requiem For A Dream. Threading its epiclove story through three time ...
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Reviews
Children Of Men
Dir: Alfonso Cuaron. US-UK. 2006. 108mins.Unwrap the fascinatingdystopian vision of the near-future in Alfonso Cuaron's Children Of Men - based on the sci-fi novel by British literarybaroness PD James - and you find a fairly ordinary movie with stock characters.But if its backdrop and story never quite coalesce into a ...
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Reviews
Children Of Men
Dir: Alfonso Cuaron. US-UK. 2006. 108mins.Unwrap the fascinating dystopian visionof the near-future in Alfonso Cuaron's Children Of Men- based on the sci-fi novel by British literary baroness PD James - and youfind a fairly ordinary movie with stock characters. But if its backdrop andstory never quite coalesce into a satisfying ...
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Reviews
Black Book (Zwartboek)
Dir: Paul Verhoeven. Neth-Bel-Ger-UK.140mins.The prodigal son of Dutch cinema comes home from Hollywood with the budget,production values and the epic nonchalance of the American Way packed in his suitcase. Black Book, Paul Verhoeven'sfirst European film for more than 20 years, is not a particularly original pieceof cinema but it is ...
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Reviews
Infamous
Dir/scr: Douglas McGrath. US 2006. 117mins.To make another TrumanCapote biopic may be regarded as a misfortune; to make another Truman Capotebiopic about exactly the same period of the writer's life looks likecarelessness. But this classic industry no-no could play out, paradoxically, infavour of Douglas McGrath's nuanced take on the US ...
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Reviews
The Black Dahlia
Lee Marshall in VeniceDir: Brian De Palma. US.2006. 121mins.A stylish, steamy genre exercise with a solid castand a cluttered storyline, The BlackDahlia matches director Brian De Palma with hard-boiled LA crime writerJames Ellroy with entertaining, if not whollysatisfying, results.Working closely withcinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond,set designer Dante Ferretti and composer Mark Isham, ...
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Reviews
Driving Lessons
MIME-Version: 1.0Content-Location: file:///C:/2A8CB117/drivingreview.htmContent-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printableContent-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"Dir/scr: Jeremy Bro=ck. UK. 200=6.95mins.Funny and tender enough to compen=satefor its lightweight, conventional core, DrivingLessons, the first directorial feature from scriptwriter Jeremy Brock (=Mrs Brown, Charlotte Gray) is a likeable HaroldAnd Maude rerun that is given a commercial leg-up by the canny casting =ofthe three ...
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Reviews
Driving Lessons
Dir/scr: Jeremy Brock. UK. 2006.95mins.Funny and tender enough to compensate for itslightweight, conventional core, DrivingLessons, the first directorial feature from scriptwriter Jeremy Brock (Mrs Brown, Charlotte Gray) is a likeable HaroldAnd Maude rerun that is given a commercial leg-up by the canny casting ofthe three main roles. Harry Potterregular Rupert ...
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Reviews
Change Of Address (Changement D'Adresse)
Dir/scr: Emmanuel Mouret. Fr. 2006. 85mins.As light and frothy as a Feydeau farce, ChangeOf Address (Changement d'Adresse) is aParisian romantic comedy whose charm is all in its peppy performances and deft,old -school take on one of the oldest genres in the book. Halfway in tonebetween a Gallic take on the ...
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Reviews
Honor De Cavalleria
Dir/scr: Albert Serra. Sp. 2006. 112mins.Don Quixoteand his faithful servant Sancho Panzaare intriguingly lost in La Mancha in Honor De Cavalleria,Albert Serra's ultra-minimalist take on Cervantes'enduring classic, which allies itself militantly with an older generation of arthouse masters: Bresson, Pasolini, Olmi. Sadisticallyslow, the film demands a patience, which few at ...
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Reviews
The Bothersome Man (Den Brysomme Mannen)
Dir: JensLien. Nor-Ice. 2006. 95mins.A darkly comicNorwegian fable, The Bothersome Manimagines the after-life as a vacuous Scandinavian social democracy: it's theglossy dystopia of The Truman Showtransported to the land of designer sofas, 30-hour weeks and sweet blonde girlscalled Ingeborg. Lien's debut, the similarly quirky Johnny Vang,did only modest box office ...