All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 56
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Reviews
Present Perfect (Passato Prossimo)
Dir: Maria Sole Tognazzi. Italy. 2003. 89minsFive friends meet up in a country house somewhere outside Rome over a long winter weekend. Each has unresolved relationship problems, some have problems with each other, and memories of other weekends in the same house hang in the air like distorting mirrors. More ...
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Reviews
The Heart Elsewhere (Il Cuore Altrove)
Dir: Pupi Avati. Italy. 2003. 107mins.The Heart Elsewhere (Il Cuore Altrove), Pupi Avati's sentimental period drama set in 1920s Bologna, has its good points, notably the emergence of Neri Marcore - so far known mainly for his appearances on Italian TV comedy shows - as a serious actor but it ...
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Reviews
Say It In My Own Words
Say It In My Own Words (Dillo Con Parole Mie)Lee Marshall in RomeDir: Daniele Luchetti. Italy. 2003. 108minsDaniele Luchetti scored a minor hit in 1995 with the classroom comedy drama La Scuola and followed it with the intermittently interesting Piccoli Maestri (1998), about a group of students caught up in ...
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Reviews
It's Raining Cows (Piovono Mucche)
Dir: Luca Vendruscolo. Italy. 2003. 95 mins.Films about the disabled tend to fall into two camps: either they are 'you can do it!' Hollywood schmaltz-fests; or so rigidly worthy and politically correct that they end up boring the audience. This little Italian gem, however, which mixes able-bodied and handicapped actors, ...
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Reviews
A Big Girl Like You (Une Grande Fille Comme Toi)
Dir: Christophe Blanc. France. 2003. 91mins.This insider study of a mixed-up adolescent girl identifies so utterly with its main character that it risks appearing as stroppy and directionless as she is. But in the end there is something mesmeric about the camera's obsession with the face of first-time, pulled-off-the-street actress ...
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Reviews
Pater Familias
Dir: Francesco Patierno. Italy. 2003. 94mins.For really vibrant Italian cinema, it is not a bad idea to look away from the industry hubs of Rome and Milan. Naples, in particular, has built a healthy homegrown scene around such directors as Mario Martone (L'Amore Molesto) and Antonio Capuano. Newest boy on ...
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Reviews
The Suit (Shik)
Dir: Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov. Russ-Ger-It-Fr. 2003. 95 mins.The latest outing by director Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov is, essentially, about three country lads fooling about, telling unlikely stories and occasionally becoming maudlin or lovestruck. Charming in its own small way, it is unlikely to have the impact of 1999's Luna Papa on the international ...
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Reviews
Seville South Side (Poligono Sur)
Dir: Dominique Abel. Spain/France. 2003. 106mins.Flamenco is fertile territory for a DV documentary crew with a mission to go beyond the tourist cliches. And this is what French actress-turned-documentarist Dominique Abel and a fast-moving group of technicians headed up by cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (Good Will Hunting, Nurse Betty) have done ...
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Reviews
Spare Parts (Rezervni Deli)
Dir: Damjan Kozole. Slovenia. 2003. 87 mins.Three films in competition at this year's Berlin dealt with the trade in illegal immigrants towards the European Union: Michael Winterbottom's Golden Bear winner In This World; FIPRESCI prize winner Distant Lights (Lichter), by German director Hans-Christian Schmid; and this small but well-crafted Slovenian ...
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Reviews
Monsieur N
Dir: Antoine de Caunes. Fr-UK-South Africa. 2003. 129mins.French TV presenter and sometime journalist Antoine de Caunes takes on Napoleon, with decidedly mixed results for the historical thriller Monsieur N. The made-for-co-production story straddles two cultures, but despite this, Monsieur N will not easily sell to the English-speaking territories it hopes ...
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Reviews
Zhou Yu's Train
Dir: Sun Zhou. China. 2003. 96 mins.Comparisons will inevitably be made between Chinese mainland romance Zhou Yu's Train and Wong-Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love. The photography is stunningly painterly, the narrative has the same suspended, timeless feel and Gong Li changes her skirt almost as often as Maggie ...
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Reviews
Jagoda In The Supermarket
Dir: Dusan Milic. Serb-Ger-It. 2003. 82mins.Produced by Emir Kusturica (who has the briefest cameo in the film as a police chief), this oddball siege comedy has many of the Greater Serb's traits: a goofball surreal-symbolic take on Balkan tragedies, characters that slip in and out of caricature, and a delirious ...
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Reviews
The Soul Keeper (Prendimi L'Anima)
Dir: Roberto Faenza. Italy-France-UK. 2003. 97mins.Italian director Roberto Faenza's first English-language film spins a historical romance out of a footnote in the history of psychoanalysis. By turns involving and frustrating, it demonstrates the danger of a many-handed script which was only translated into English at a fairly late stage. But ...
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Reviews
Facing Windows (La Finestra Di Fronte)
Dir: Ferzan Ozpetek. It/UK/Turkey/Port. 2003. 105mins.Ferzan Ozpetek is one of the few contemporary Italian directors who manages to straddle the arthouse-commercial divide. Born in Turkey, the director drew strongly on Anatolian themes in his first two films, The Turkish Bath (1997) and Harem Suare (1999), but with his last, 2001's ...
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Reviews
Yes Nurse, No Nurse! (Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster)
Dir: Pieter Kramer. The Netherlands. 2002. 100mins.Busby Berkeley comes to Amsterdam in all-singing, all-dancing Dutch-language musical Yes Nurse, No Nurse!. Relentless innocence and Mary-Poppins optimism may bore the more cynical before the end, but it contains enough visual style and sheer kookiness to carry the majority through to the inevitable ...
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Reviews
Distant Lights (Lichter)
Dir: Hans-Christian Schmid. Germany. 2003. 106mins.The winner of the FIPRESCI prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival, Lichter plays like a German Short Cuts. If Altman's cinematic short story collection was given unity by its origin in Raymond Carver's dark fables of the disempowered American male, then Distant Lights - ...
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Reviews
His Brother (Son Frere)
Dir: Patrice Chereau. France. 2003. 89mins.Patrice Chereau's bleak and uncompromising new film about terminal illness and fraternal love is one of the director's most austere and least commercial works to date. Intimacy, to be sure, was not an easy ride for audiences, but it had more focus and structure to ...
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Reviews
Blind Shaft (Mang Jing)
Dir: Li Yang. China-Ger. 2003. 92 mins.For most festival-goers at Berlin, the two first-time directors in competition were George Clooney and an unknown Chinese director. In the end, however, it was the latter who won the recognition, for Li Yang 's Blind Shaft is a solid, impressive debut. A watchable, ...
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News
Hours, Adaptation lead Golden Bear sweepstakes
Stephen Daldry's The Hours and Spike Jonze's Adaptation are leading the Golden Bear sweepstakes, followed closely by Zhang Yimou's stirring martial arts epic Hero, which was lauded to the skies by some critics but trashed by others. China was also in the running for a prize of some sort with ...
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Reviews
Traces Of The Dragon: Jackie Chan And His Lost Family
Dir: Mabel Cheung. China-HK. 2003. 94mins.This homage to Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan, which opened the Panorama Documentary section at Berlin, was commissioned by Chan himself as a "family souvenir". But in the hands of director Mabel Cheung (known until now for features such as The Soong Sisters or ...