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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 48
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Reviews
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Dir: Lukas Moodysson. Sweden. 2006. 74mins. Wilfully obscure and defiantly strange, Lukas Moodysson'sblack-and-white film is as much visual art as cinema. Moodysson would havelittle patience with such subjective categories; but distributors are notoriouslysubjective, and few will touch a film that lacks even the narrative or shock ofMoodysson's previous departure from ...
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Reviews
Candy
Dir: Neil Armfield. Australia.2006. 108minsAlternately dazzling andflashy, affecting and mannered, this impressive debut from feted Australiantheatre director Neil Armfield is lifted to the verge of excellence byoutstanding performances from Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish as a pair ofheroin addicts in love. If it doesn't quite scalethe final peak, it's because ...
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Reviews
V For Vendetta
Dir:James McTeigue UK-Ger. 133mins.Thelatest Alan Moore graphic novel adaptation, after From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta has A for Auxiliarywritten all over it.It allstarts promisingly enough, with sombre chords and a vintage, black-and-white WarnerBros logo ushering us into a dark vision of a totalitarian Britain ...
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Reviews
El Custodio
Dir:Rodrigo Moreno. Arg/Ger/Fr. 100 mins.ElCustodio did nothing to satisfy festivalBerlinale audiences hungry for a little light entertainment. This study of anArgentinian government minister's police minder is painfully slow, taking allof 90 minutes to build to its first, and last, moment of real action. But itis also a strangely compelling exercise ...
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Reviews
Slumming
Dir: Michael Glawogger. Aust, 2006. 96mins.Michael Glawogger's Slumminghas something of The Edukators about it, and something ofMike Leigh's Naked: it's about blind existentialrage, arrogant male ennui and what happens when schoolboy pranks turn nasty.But it is not didactic: if anything, Glawogger trustshis own creative instinct too much in this story ...
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Reviews
Once In A Lifetime
Dirs: PaulCrowder, John Dower. US. 2006. 98 mins. Aiming for the huge double demographicof football fans and 1970s nostalgics, Once In A Lifetime narrates the rise andfall of the New York Cosmos football team which, for a few short years in thelate 1970s, was home to stars of the ...
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Reviews
Crime Novel (Romanzo Criminale)
Dir: Michele Placido.It-UK-Fr. 2005. 146mins.The middle floor betweenItaly's auteur attic and its commercial bargain basement is curiously empty.Screenwriting duo Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia are among the few to havemade their home here, scripting films like The Best Of Youth, which for all its symphonic, multi-linearstructure and often prickly political ...
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Reviews
Gravehopping (Od Groba Do Groba)
Dir/scr: Jan Cvitkovic. Slovenia, 2005. 103mins.A darkly comic curio, the second filmfrom Bread And Milk director Jan Cvitkovic has been flying the festival flag for Sloveniaever since its debut at San Sebastian - where it picked up the New Directors Award- and has since won best film prizes at Cottbus ...
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Melissa P
Dir: Luca Guadagnino. It-Sp. 2005. 102mins. "Loosely based on" ascandalous bestselling book which purports to recount the true sexualexperiences of a 16-year-old Sicilian schoolgirl, Sony Pictures Entertainment'sfirst Italian production Melissa Pstruggles gamely to be less of an adolescent sexploitation flick and more of acoming-of-age study.True,there is some teen sex ...
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News
Cvitkovic and Takushi share honours at Turin
Slovenian film Gravehopping shared top honoursat the 2005 Torino Film Festival with Clouds of Yesterday, anostalgia-soaked paean to the silent film era which represents the featuredirecting debut of Japanese actor and composer Tsubokawa Takushi.The Torino best feature awardfor Gravehopping continued the triumphal festival march of JanCvitkovic's choral black comedy, which ...
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Reviews
Viva Zapatero!
Dir/scr: Sabina Guzzanti. It. 2005. 80mins.Sabina Guzzanti'santi-censorship documentary Viva Zapatero! does for Italianprime minister Silvio Berlusconi what Fahrenheit 9/11 did for George Bush: itexposes the ugly subtext that, in the film-maker's view, lies behind theairbrushed public image.Like Michael Moore, Sabina Guzzanti is no shrinking violet, and there is at first ...
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Reviews
The Tiger And The Snow (La Tigre E La Neve)
Dir: Roberto Benigni. It. 2005. 114mins.Strictly for those with high schmaltz threshholds, Roberto Benigni's The Tiger And TheSnow will go down well at home, but outside of Italy it isunlikely to extend the fanbase of the madcap Tuscanactor-director.Certainly this £30m ($36m) romance,set against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, ...
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Reviews
All The Invisible Children
Dirs: Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, KatiaLund, Jordan and Ridley Scott, Stefano Veneruso, John Woo. It. 2005. 131mins.Portmanteau films arelike chocolate assortments: pretty boring once all the coffee creams have gone.The latest multi-director outing to test international audiences' limitedappetite for the genre, All The Invisible Children is a worthy ...
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Reviews
Shadowboxer
DirLee Daniels. US. 2005. 93mins.LeeDaniels made history as the first stand-alone black producer of anOscar-winning film, when Halle Berry lifted the Best Actress prize for Monster'sBall in 2002. It's a shame then that the talented Daniels chose Shadowboxerfor his directorial debut: it's doubtful whether even the most experiencedauteur could have ...
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Reviews
Dam Street (Hong yan)
Dir: Li Yu. Chi-Fr. 1995.93mins.A persuasive, lyricalstudy of smalltown life in rural China in the 1980s and 1990s, Dam Street fullyconfirms the promise of director Li Yu's debut feature, Fish And Elephant.Like that first film, Dam Street deals with women's issues - but not ina narrow or dogmatic way. There ...
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Reviews
Enlightened By Fire (Iluminados Por El Fuego)
Dir:Tristan Bauer. Arg. 2005. 100mins.Sometimesa film has more value as a national pain relief than as a quality piece ofcinema. Such is certainly the case with Enlightened By Fire, the firstArgentine commercial film to take on the subject of the Falklands/Malvinas war,and to deal with the traumas of the young ...
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Summer In Berlin (Sommer Vorm Balkon)
Dir: Andreas Dresen.Germany 2005. 112mins.Indie director AndreasDresen is the German counterpart of Robert Guediguian: a regional maverickwithin a national system, whose drama-tinged comedies, or comedy-tinged dramas,are all set in the milieu he knows best. Dresen's preferred location is theformer East Germany, his preferred subject those who are struggling in thedepressed ...
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Reviews
Not Here To Be Loved (Je Ne Suis Pas La Pour Etre Aime)
Dir: Stephane Brize. Fr.2005. 95mins.French director StephaneBrize's second feature after Hometown Blues (1999), Not Here To BeLoved is more a slow, intimate study of two repressed characters than astraightforward romantic comedy. The film's measured dosing of humour andpassion takes its cue from the tango music, which is central to the ...
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Reviews
Manslaughter (Drabet)
Dir:Per Fly. Den. 2005. 105mins.Adark, controlled moral tragedy, Manslaughter is even more austere, evenmore relentless in its probings of the consequences of our wrong turns, thanPer Fly's previous film, Inheritance. Jesper Christensen, most recentlyseen in The Interpreter, delivers an outstanding performance as anacademic proponent of class resistance forced to live ...
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Reviews
El Aura
Dir/scr: Fabian Belinsky.Arg-Sp. 2005. 129mins.A successful debut filmis always a difficult act to follow. Argentine director Fabian Bielinsky dealswith the pressure by giving us what might be described as the anti Nine Queensin his follow-up feature, El Aura. That multi-territory hit, whichspawned the US remake Criminal, was as sharp as ...