![The Brightest SunScreen[Courtesy HKIFF]](https://d1nslcd7m2225b.cloudfront.net/Pictures/274x183/3/5/0/1448350_thebrightestsunscreencourtesyhkiff_312678.jpg)
All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 54
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
Reviews
The Card Player (Il Cartaio)
Dir: Dario Argento. Italy. 2003. 107mins.Italian horror-maestro Dario Argento will alienate many of his loyal cult followers with this surprisingly conventional ripper-flick, which revolves around a serial killer's challenge to police investigators to play online video-poker if they want to save the life of his trussed and webcammed victims. But ...
-
Reviews
Details (Detaljer)
Dir: Kristian Petri. Sweden. 2003. 112mins.Although this theatrical adaptation is very much a minority sport, it did not quite deserve to drop out of sight at the Swedish box office in the two weeks after its October 10 release. Its potential has been confirmed at MIFED, where the film attracted ...
-
News
European Film Awards adopt English accent
While no film looks likely to sweep the board at this weekend's European Film Awards (Dec 6), a winner has already emerged - the English language. Out of four non-UK nominees for best European film, three are English-language productions. The exception ' Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye, Lenin! ' partly makes ...
-
Reviews
Caterina In The City (Caterina Va In Citta)
Dir: Paolo Virzi. Italy. 2003. 106mins.This contemporary commedia all'italiana squeezes some enjoyable mileage out of the old "hick in the big city" trope, in its tale of a 13-year-old girl who moves to Rome from the provinces, and is immediately caught up in the factional politics of her new high ...
-
Reviews
The Return Of Cagliostro
Dir: Daniele Cipri and Franco Maresco. Italy. 2003. 100 mins.The films of Sicilian directing duo Daniele Cipri and Franco Maresco are an acquired taste. If you find physical deformities, speech defects and farting priests funny, you'll love them. The present reviewer was therefore doubled up in fits of laughter through ...
-
Reviews
Osama
Dir: Siddiq Barmak. Afghanistan, Japan, Ireland. 2003. 82 mins.The striking title is not the only virtue of this harrowing slice of cinema, which is the first feature film shot in Afghanistan by an Afghan director since the fall of the Taliban. In a hundred years of cinema-producing history, Afghanistan has ...
-
Reviews
Singing Behind The Screens (Cantando Dietro I Paraventi)
Dir: Ermanno Olmi. Italy. 2003. 100 mins.Years ago, David Thomson wrote "A question mark hangs over Ermanno Olmi, as if he needed some gust of passion or surrealism to free him from the aspirations of realism". This gust began to blow in Olmi's last film, The Profession Of Arms, and ...
-
Reviews
Les Sentiments
Dir: Noemi Lvovsky. France. 2003. 95mins.French director Noemie Lvovsky came to notice with two small autobiographical features set at different stages in the life of four girls. The second, Life Doesn't Scare Me (La Vie Ne Me Fait Pas Peur, 1999) earned Lvovsky a slew of festival prizes, including a ...