All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 55
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Reviews
Last Life In The Universe
Dir: Penek Rattanaruang. Thailand/US/Netherlands. 2003. 110 mins.There is a lot to be said for the theory that a territory only really comes of age when it develops a credible arthouse cinema. If this is true, then Thailand can finally join the big boys. Last Life In The Universe is the ...
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Reviews
Last Life In The Universe
Dir: Penek Rattanaruang. Thailand/US/Netherlands. 2003. 110 mins.There is a lot to be said for the theory that a territory only really comes of age when it develops a credible arthouse cinema. If this is true, then Thailand can finally join the big boys. Last Life In The Universe is the ...
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Reviews
Intolerable Cruelty
Dir: Joel Coen. 2003. 100 mins.The Coen brothers paradox is simply stated: why have critical plaudits and a substantial international fanbase never translated into big box-office results' Fargo was praised to the skies but performed disappointingly; while O Brother Where Art Thou, the Coens' best earner to date, did what ...
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Reviews
Once Upon A Time In Mexico
Dir: Roberto Rodriguez. US 2003. 101 mins.You have to give Roberto Rodriguez his due: he's nothing if not ambitious. Take the title of his new film. With a dose of homage and a dose of parody and a slug of bare-faced presumption, Once Upon A Time In Mexico declares its ...
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Reviews
The Human Stain
Dir: Robert Benton. US. 2003. 104 mins.Or The Human Blot, depending on your point of view. It's not that Miramax' early autumn Oscar rollout is a bad film: it's just that it doesn't quite work up the energy to be a good one. True, the pairing of Kidman and Hopkins ...
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Reviews
The Human Stain
Dir: Robert Benton. US. 2003. 104 mins.Or The Human Blot, depending on your point of view. It's not that Miramax' early autumn Oscar rollout is a bad film: it's just that it doesn't quite work up the energy to be a good one. True, the pairing of Kidman and Hopkins ...
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Reviews
The Dreamers
Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci. UK. 2003. mins.The Dreamers is not the masterpiece that some were expecting. But neither does it betray the return to form that was announced by Bernardo Bertolucci's 1998 chamber drama, Besieged. This is an infinitely more intelligent, edgy and intriguing film than, say, Little Buddha. Its main ...
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Reviews
No Rest For The Brave (Pas De Repos Pour Les Braves)
Dir: Alain Guiraudie. France-Austria. 2003. 105mins.Self-taught director Alain Guiraudie's first film to break the 60-minute barrier is the live-action, rural French answer to Waking Life, Richard Linklater's animated, urban American dream spiel. In both films we are plunged straight into the metaphysical dilemmas of a group of predominantly male alter ...
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Reviews
La Meglio Gioventu
Dir: Marco Tullio Giordana. Italy. 2003. 366mins.Marco Tullio Giordana's new film, which follows two Italian brothers between 1966 and 2002, is remarkable for three reasons. Firstly, it is just over six hours long. Secondly, it does not drag and is a compelling weave of micro and macro history. And thirdly, ...
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Reviews
The Silence Of The Forest (Le Silence De La Foret)
Didier Ouenangare and Bassek Ba Kobhio's slight tale has been billed as the first ever Central African film, says Lee MarshallDirs: Didier Ouenangare, Bassek Ba Kobhio. Central African Republic-Cameroon-Gabon. 2003. 91minsMore a consciousness-raising gesture than a piece of cinema, pure and simple, The Silence Of The Forest is a slight, ...
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Reviews
The Island (L'Isola)
Dir: Costanza Quatriglio. Italy. 2003. 102mins.A coming of age film set on Favignana, an island off western Sicily known for its tuna fishing traditions, The Island (L'Isola) is so relentlessly charming and so ravishingly shot that one can almost forgive a lack of dramatic backbone. Dealing with themes that arise ...
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Reviews
Crimson Gold
Dir: Jafar Panahi. Iran. 2003. 96mins.The triumphant march of Iranian cinema continues apace. After Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five In The Afternoon won the jury prize in the main competition at Cannes comes Crimson Gold, Jafar Panahi's fourth feature, which picked up the Un Certain Regard jury prize. Set in present-day ...
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Reviews
Shara
Dir: Naomi Kawase. Japan. 2003. 100 minsThe third feature by Japanese director Naomi Kawase, Cannes competitor Shara is set, like Suzaku (a Cannes Camera d'Or winner in 1996) and Hotaru (2000), in the director's home province of Nara. Like the previous two, it deals with themes of separation, the continuity ...
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Reviews
Niki&Flo
Dir: Lucian Pintilie. France-Romania. 2003. 98minsVeteran Romanian director Lucian Pintilie has crafted a fitfully amusing, occasionally absorbing fable of slow disintegration around a fragile story of a father who feels increasingly lonely and alienated as his children leave home, one for the afterlife and the other for the US. Mixing ...
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Reviews
Today And Tomorrow (Hoy Y Manana)
Dir: Alejandro Chomski. Argentina-Spain. 2003. 86minsOne of the most talked-up films at Cannes, the Un Certain Regard entry Today And Tomorrow turns out to be a watchable, non-judgmental, low-budget portrayal of a young woman's descent into prostitution in post-slump Argentina. Given the hype surrounding the director - who is the ...
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Reviews
Purple Butterfly
Dir: Lou Ye. China. 2003. 126minsAfter the Cannes Competition screening of Purple Butterfly, the long-awaited third film from Chinese director Lou Ye, some of the best critical minds of our generation - plus the present reviewer - stood outside the Salle Bunuel, arguing about the plot. Everyone had a slightly ...
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Reviews
The Brown Bunny
Dir: Vincent Gallo. US. 2003. 118minsA theory began circulating in Cannes after the press showing of The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's astonishingly self-indulgent second film as director (and producer, and scriptwriter, and... see the credits below for more details). The theory was that the whole thing was actually a wind-up ...
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Reviews
Reconstruction
Dir: Christoffer Boe. Denmark. 2003. 89minsAfter sowing its wild oats, Dogme has settled down and started a family. Christoffer Boe, one of the first products of this post-Lars generation, is not so much concerned with stripping cinema down to its basics as with manipulating its shimmering surface. The first full-length ...
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News
Cecchi Gori returns to production
Beleaguered Italian media mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, whose production, distribution and exhibition empire recently fell apart in a morass of bad debts and corruption charges, is back. At a Cannes press conference, the carefully-coiffed helmsman of the Cecchi Gori Group, created by his father Mario, claimed that he has been ...