All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 52
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Reviews
The House Keys (Le Chiavi di Casa)
Dir:Gianni Amelio. It-Ger-Fr. 2004. 115mins.Thoughit was well received by the home crowd and the local media, who were desperatefor at least one good Italian film in competition at Venice this year, GianniAmelio's eagerly awaited The House Keys was a major disappointment tothe rest of us.Atough and sombre director, whose Sicilian ...
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Reviews
Land Of Plenty
Dir:Wim Wenders. Ger-UK. 2004. 113mins.WimWenders' Land Of Plenty is a post 9/11 parable that is half politicalpamphlet, half yet another exploration of the director's favourite theme - thestranger in a strange land. But although it is a more controlled exercise thanthe mess that was The Million Dollar Hotel, it does ...
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Reviews
Shark Tale
Dirs:Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman. USA. 2004. 90mins.Afterbugs and monsters, the DreamWorks versus Disney/Pixar tit-for-tat animationgrudge match has moved on to fish. The latest blow to be struck by theDreamWorks camp, Shark Tale is a colourful, fast-paced, jive-talkingseabed caper that continues the scattershot, kids-and-adults targeting of muchmajor studio animation ...
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Reviews
Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru No Ugoku Shiro)
Dir: Hayao Miyazaki.Japan. 2004. 117mins.Japanese animation geniusHayao Miyazaki's follow-up to the international critical and box-office hit SpiritedAway is as visually inventive and unremittingly charming as itspredecessor. By turns funny, exhilarating and touching, it lacks only onething: the spiritual and metaphysical depth that made Spirited Away sucha haunting experience.While this will ...
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News
Venice: from the sublime to the ridiculous
The 61st edition of the Venice film festival proved to be anunmitigated fiasco from the organisational point of view, with films running upto two hours late and Al Pacino unable to get a seat at the official screeningof The Merchant of Venice (starring Al Pacino).The final straw came when theprojectionist ...
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Reviews
Palindromes
Dir/scr: Todd Solondz.US. 2004. 99mins.Sundance darling ToddSolondz' latest warped take on the American dream is an uneven film, half bigemotional roller coaster, half whimsical fable, that inhabits the Midwesternsuburban wastelands somewhere between the David Lynch Motel and the HarmonyKorine Five-and-Dime. The story of a 12-year-old Kansas girl who is determinedto ...
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Reviews
Birth
Dir: Jonathan Glazer.UK-US. 2004. 100mins.Jonathan Glazer'slong-awaited follow-up to Sexy Beast shows the commercials and musicvideo director in austere, minimalist mode. A snail-paced but neverthelesscompelling yarn about a ten-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation ofa woman's dead husband, Birth is half psychological thriller and halfexistential love story. By turns ...
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Reviews
Strings
Dir:Anders Ronnow Klarlund. Den-Swe-UK-Nor. 2004. 92mins.Say "puppet movie" and most people think of the Muppetsor, at a push, Pinocchio - who has most famously come to life on screen in cartoon and live action form.Traditional marionettes have always messed with the suspension of disbeliefthat appears to be necessary in the ...
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Reviews
Mysterious Skin
Dir:Gregg Araki USA. 2004. 99mins.GreggAraki is a film buff's director, one of those independent US mavericks, likeHarmony Korine, whose regular feature outings are staples of the internationalfestival circuit (it plays Toronto after its Orizzonti premiere at Venice) andultra-arthouse theatres, but register only the faintest bleeps on the radar ofthe cinemagoing ...
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Reviews
A Love Song For Bobby Long
Dir:Shainee Gabel. USA. 2004. 119mins.Oldtrooper Travolta meets rising star Johansson in A Love Song For Bobby Long,a fragile but charming slice of New Orleans bohemiana. It was a nice idea togive the on-screen stand-off between their two characters (he a washed-up,alcoholic former university professor; she a stroppy school dropout with ...
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Reviews
The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro)
Dir: Alejandro Amenabar.Spain. 2004. 127mins.Though Alejandro Amenabar's new film screened only athird of the way into the Venice festival, the gut feeling after the earlypress screening on the Lido was that we had just been watching the Leone D'Oro.Still only 32, Amenabar proves with this moving study of a quadraplegic ...
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Reviews
The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro) review
Dir: Alejandro Amenabar.Spain. 2004. 127mins.Though Alejandro Amenabar's new film screened only athird of the way into the Venice festival, the gut feeling after the earlypress screening on the Lido was that we had just been watching the Leone D'Oro.Still only 32, Amenabar proves with this moving study of a quadraplegic ...
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Reviews
Throw Down
Dir:Johnnie To. Hong Kong. 2004. 94mins.After25 years as a director of solid Hong Kong crime and action features, Johnnie Tois finally beginning to be taken seriously on the international festivalcircuit. PTU, the story of a city cop's search for his missing gun, waswell received in 2003, and Breaking News was ...
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Reviews
Ma Mere
Dir: Christophe Honore.France. 2004. 109 mins.It's not difficult to seewhy second-time director Christophe Honore was surprised when Ma Mere,his incest-laced study of sexual obsession was turned down by the Cannesselection committee: it is, after all, much more of a festival film than acommercial prospect. Striking in its stark cinematic language, ...
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Reviews
Strange Crime (Sotto Falso Nome)
Dir:Roberto Ando. It-Switz. 2004. 105 mins.Asurprise choice as closing film for this year's Cannes Critics' Week, StrangeCrime is a frustratingly unresolved erotic thriller about false identityand dark secrets from hardworking Italian indie director Roberto Ando. Mostmemorable for its steamy sex scenes between Daniel Auteill and Anna Mougalis,which take us back ...
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Reviews
The Smell of Blood (L'odore Del Sangue)
Dir: Mario Martone. It-Fr. 2004. 99mins.Italian auteur Mario Martone's latest arthouse offering is a sterile and rather dated relationship drama in psycho-thriller sauce which will be defended only by the director's staunchest fans, and make the rest of us nostalgic for the edgy originality of his 1995 breakout film, L'Amore ...
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Reviews
Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo
Dir: Luca Lucini. Italy. 2004. 102 mins.Federico Moccia's novel Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo (which translates as 'Three Steps Over Heaven') was a real teen phenomenon in Italy: first published in 1992, it soon went out of print, but high-school students continued to circulate photocopied copies of the work - ...
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Reviews
Don't Move (Non Ti Muovere)
Italy-Spain-UK. 2004. 121 mins.Don't Move is worth any number of seminars on the state of Italian cinema, and is ample proof that there is life in the old dog yet. The cynical might object that this is because of a standout performance by Spanish star Penelope Cruz, who does something ...
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Reviews
South Of The Clouds (Yun De Nan Fang)
Dir: Zhu Wen China. 2004. 100mins.Zhu Wen began his working life as a factory engineer before deciding, 10 years ago, that stories were his real metier. After four short story collections, a novel and two film script collaborations (he was one of three credited screenwriters on the Zhang Yuang prison ...
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Reviews
Agatha And The Storm (Agata e la Tempesta)
Dir: Silvio Soldini. It-Switz-UK. 2004. 123 mins.With his 1999 comedy Bread And Tulips, Silvio Soldini pulled off the increasingly difficult act of combining auteurish pretensions (albeit gentle and soft-centred ones) with commercial success: the film racked up an impressive $5m-plus in its home market alone - around four times its ...