All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 53
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Reviews
Kick 'n' Rush (2 Ryk Og 1 Aflevering)
Dir: Aage Rais-Nordentoft. Denmark. 2004. 95mins.Mixing football with the problems of adolescence has become something of a sub-genre in recent years. Purely Belter and Bend It Like Beckham opened the scoring for England; now the Scandinavians have begun to lob their own teen soccer tales into the area, with United, ...
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Reviews
Cold Light (Kaldaljos)
Dir: Hilmar Oddsson. Ice-Ger-UK-Nor. 2004. 92mins.There must be a law in Iceland stipulating that local films should contain one or more of the following: a) a weird and lonely hero; b) an avalanche; c) cod fishermen vs the cruel sea; d) magical powers, especially the ability to predict the future. ...
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Reviews
Pearls And Pigs (Helmia Ja Sikoja)
Dir: Perttu Leppa. Finland. 2003. 113 mins.Feelgood comedy Pearls And Pigs was seen by around 1 in 40 Finns in the weeks after its home release late last year, and while being big in Finland is no watertight guarantee of international success, this likeable teen comedy has some serious Hollywood ...
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Reviews
Your Next Life (La Vida Que Tu Espera)
Dir: Manuel Guttierez Aragon. Spain. 2004. 110 mins.It's doubtful that audiences can recall seeing so many cows in a single film since O Brother, Where Art Thou' The ruminants in veteran director Gutierrez Aragon's 15th feature don't get machine-gunned like their cousins in the Coen brothers' Odyssey-caper, though one does ...
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Reviews
20:30:40
Dir: Silvia Chang. Taiwan-Hong Kong. 2004. 109mins.A cinematic weave of contemporary Asian women's stories, 20:30:40 is also a star vehicle for its three female protagonists. Sylvia Chang (who also directed and co-wrote), Rene Liu and Lee Sinje, each half a generation apart, have a cross-border appeal that stretches from Taiwan ...
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News
Rohmer, Loach lead plaudits as Berlin divides critics
With one official screening day to go, the critical consensus on this year's Berlinale competition might be summed up as "good but not outstanding".Opinions on the line-up ranged from Italian critic Fabio Ferzetti's "disappointing", through German critic Margaret Koehler's comment that this year's selection included "a lot of films that ...
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Reviews
Ae Fond Kiss
Dir: Ken Loach. UK-It-Ger-Sp. 2004. 103 mins.Ken Loach is famous for shooting in sequence and not revealing key plot details to his actors beforehand, in order to catch the freshness of their shock or anger unfiltered by rehearsal. It's been a while since he's startled his fans in the same ...
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Reviews
Lost Embrace (El Abrazo Partido)
Dir Daniel Burman Argentina/France/Italy/Spain. 2003. 101 mins.Argentinian director Daniel Burman's fourth feature, which picked up the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at this year's Berlinale, is a bittersweet comedy of national, personal and religious identity set in a Jewish inner city suburb of Buenos Aires at the low point of ...
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Reviews
The Final Cut
Dir: Omar Naim. Italy. 2004. 104 mins.The best thing about this sci-fi thriller starring Robin Williams is its premise. The idea that advance in neurotechnology will one day allow us to video our whole lives from somewhere inside our brains throws up all kinds of issues about privacy, about the ...
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Reviews
The Stratosphere Girl
Dir/scr: M X Oxberg. Ger-UK-Fr-Switz-It. 2004. 92 mins.It's a chilly place, the stratosphere, and the air can get pretty rarefied. Nothing wrong with that, of course: but down here on earth, cinemagoers need a little character warmth and a little story oxygen, and the third feature by young German director ...
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Reviews
Beautiful Country
Dir: Hans Petter Moland. Norway/US. 2004. 126 mins.A beautifully photographed but dramatically clunky saga about a Vietnamese war child's journey to rejoin his father in America, Beautiful Country is as much Terence Malick's film as it is that of Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland. Malick wrote the treatment, co-produced and ...
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Reviews
Red Lights (Feux Rouges)
Dir: Cedric Kahn. France. 2003. 106 mins.Imagine a bleak and edgy feature-length episode of Mr Bean co-directed by Robert Bresson and Vincent Gallo. Then imagine that it's actually rather good. Dark and unconventional, this road thriller by Roberto Succo director Cedric Kahn gets under the skin in ways that it's ...
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Reviews
Before Sunset
Dir: Richard Linklater. USA. 2004. 82 mins.The sequel to Richard Linklater's brief encounter movie Before Sunrise is utterly charming, and has a light but not superficial touch that is all too rare in contemporary boy-meets-girl flicks. Virtually plotless, it is (like many of Linklater's films) a wordy trip which takes ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part II: Vaux To The Sea
Dir: Peter Greenaway Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2004. 120mins.Part two of the movie arm of Peter Greenaway's gloriously megalomaniac multimedia project The Tulse Luper Suitcases is, if anything, even more ravishingly weird and hermetic than Part I: The Moab Story, which screened at Cannes last year (the second part enjoyed at special screening ...
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Reviews
First Love (Primo Amore)
Dir: Matteo Garrone. Italy. 2004. 98mins.The only Italian film in competition at Berlin, Matteo Garrone's First Love takes an unflinching look at the subject of anorexia. It is as painful an experience for the audience as it appears to be for the protagonist: by the end, we feel that we ...
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Reviews
In Your Hands (Forbrydelser)
Dir Annette K. Olesen. Denmark. 2003. 100 mins.Annette K. Olesen's In Your Hands is the latest Danish film to receive an official Dogme95 certificate, and is the easily the most muscular, in dramatic terms, since the first, Thomas Vinterberg's revelatory family tragedy Festen. In the same big moral vein as ...
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News
Berlinale adds political spice to glitz cocktail
Glamour is set to walk hand in hand with politics along the red carpet at this year's Berlinale.First, there's the opening Cold Mountain bonanza tonight (Feb 5) fronted by Anthony Minghella, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brendan Gleeson - although Nicole Kidman will be a no-show and Jude Law and Renee ...
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Reviews
Stork Day (E Gia Ieri)
Dir: Giulio Manfredonia. Italy/Spain/UK. 2004. 94 mins.Why would anyone want to remake a film as unique as Groundhog Day' The only original thing about this bland, inoffensive attempt to do just that is the fact that it is a European remake of an American film. Producer Riccardo Tozzi's claim that ...
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Reviews
The Silence Between Two Thoughts (Sokoote Beine Do Fekr )
Dir: Babak Payami. Iran. 2003. 88mins.There were three Iranian films at Venice last year; and all three were newsworthy. One (Hana Makhmalbaf's Joy Of Madness) because the director was only 14. Another (Abolfazl Jalili's The First Letter) because the director had been detained in Teheran by the authorities. And the ...
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Reviews
Three Steps Dancing (Ballo A Tre Passi)
Dir: Salvatore Mereu. Italy. 2003. 106 mins.Islands are becoming a real force in Italian cinema. Not just films set on islands, like Respiro or L'Isola, but films made by islanders. Aside from the offerings of temple elders Bertolucci and Bellocchio, the two most invigoratingly different Italian films to appear at ...