All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 57
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Reviews
My Life Without Me
Dir: Isabel Coixet. Spain-Canada. 2003. 106 mins.My Life Without Me is Love Story with attitude. Sarah Polley - who turns in one of those performances that shift an acting career into a higher gear - even looks a little bit like Ali McGraw. But while audiences should go armed ...
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Reviews
Good Bye, Lenin!
Dir: Wolfgang Becker. Germany. 2003. 123mins.Leading a strong home team at this year's Berlinale, competition entry Goodbye Lenin! is a high-concept fall-of-the-Wall comedy drama that has much going for it: a strong script, an extremely watchable lead in Daniel Bruhl, photography with a sharp, clean, cinematic gloss and a Nyman-like ...
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Reviews
I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura)
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores. Italy. 2003. 107mins.An atmospheric, good-looking child's-view thriller set around a kidnapping in southern Italy during the 1970s, I'm Not Scared is Gabriele Salvatores 11th film. It is also his best: at last the Milanese director, whose previous films have been dragged down by a taste for grotesque, ...
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Reviews
Remember Me (Ricordati Di Me)
Dir: Gabriele Muccino. It-Fr-UK. 2003. 100mins.Remember Me, Italian golden boy Gabriele Muccino's fourth film, exposes the terrifying moral and intellectual void at the heart of modern Italy. Unfortunately, it's not trying to - at least not very hard. Rather than channelling the emptiness to make a point about today's TV-fed, ...
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Reviews
No Good Deed
Dir: Bob Rafelson. USA. 2002. 104mins.Based on a Dashiell Hammett story, Bob Rafelson's latest noir thriller is neither particularly dark nor especially thrilling. Samuel L Jackson makes a fair stab at the first black diabetic cello-playing cop in cinema history, but his bitter intensity is not enough to paper over ...
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Reviews
El Alamein: The Line Of Fire
Dir: Enzo Monteleone. Italy. 2002. 123mins.At last, Italy too has its Saving Private Ryan (minus some of Spielberg's special effects) or it's The Thin Red Line (minus some of Malick's cosmic vision) . El Alamein: The Line Of Fire is the first Italian film to respect the new American war-movie ...
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Reviews
Fuehrer Ex
Dir: Winfried Bonengel. Germany. 2002. 106 mins.Winfried Bonengel has made neo-Nazis his speciality subject. The documentary Profession: Neo-Nazi (1993) was shown at 40 festivals around the world, while Fuehrer Ex , the book he wrote with former neo-Nazi militant Ingo Hasselbach, became a minor bestseller when it appeared in the ...
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Reviews
The Magic Box (Sandouk Ajab)
Dir: Ridha Behi. Tunisia-France. 2002. 89mins.One of the few really pleasant surprises at this year's Venice Film Festival, The Magic Box is a small but likeable Tunisian drama that recycles the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso theme without appearing derivative. It was snapped up by Norway's BV International after its out-of-competition world ...
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Reviews
People I Know
Dir: Daniel Algrant. USA. 2001. 100mins.Anyone who wants to see Al Pacino in his one of his most impressive roles since Scent Of A Woman is going to have to get on a plane to Rome, at least for the time being. A combination of commercial bad timing and self-regulatory ...
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Reviews
Pinocchio
Dir: Roberto Benigni. Italy. 2002. 108mins.Pinocchio is Roberto Benigni's reward - from himself, Medusa and Miramax - for the success of La Vita E Bella. No small reward: its Euros40m budget makes this the most expensive Italian film ever, and its 860-screen release on 11 October is the biggest ever ...
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Reviews
Callas Forever
Dir: Franco Zeffirelli. It-UK-Fr-Sp-Rom. 2002. 103 mins.Whether Franco Zeffirelli's biopic of opera star Maria Callas satisfies its audience will largely depend on demographics. Like its director, this is a film of the old school that will appeal to an older generation of music lovers and occasional cinemagoers, who do not ...
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Reviews
Dirty Pretty Things
Dir: Stephen Frears. UK. 2002. 98mins.Stephen Frears' latest film doesn't just expose the rotten underbelly of London: it slices it wide open. By turns macabre (often stomach-churningly so), funny and tender, this elaborate tale of moonlighting and illegal organ transplants set among the city's invisible underclass of immigrant service workers ...
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Reviews
Oasis
Dir: Lee Chang-dong. Korea. 2002. 134mins.His 2000 festival-pleaser Peppermint Candy made Korean writer/director Lee Chang-dong one of Asia's hot new arthouse properties. With Oasis, his third feature, he puts his talent for unusual stories and finely-nuanced characters (he is also a novelist) to good use to further that reputation. A ...
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Reviews
Ken Park
Dir: Larry Clark and Ed Lachman. US-Neth-France. 2002. 92mins.Every film festival needs its succes de scandale, and who better than Larry Clark to lay on the controversy at Venice 2002' Ken Park - co-directed by Clark and cinematographer Ed Lachman - contains scenes of graphic, uncut sexual activity between what ...
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Reviews
Ken Park
Dir: Larry Clark and Ed Lachman. US-Neth-France. 2002. 92mins.Every film festival needs its succes de scandale, and who better than Larry Clark to lay on the controversy at Venice 2002' Ken Park - co-directed by Clark and cinematographer Ed Lachman - contains scenes of graphic, uncut sexual activity between what ...
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Reviews
Ripley's Game
Dir: Liliana Cavani. It-UK. 2002. 112mins.Liliana Cavani, the veteran Italian director, was presumably brought in to direct this Patricia Highsmith novel in the hope that some of the dark menace of her drama The Night Porter might rub off on Ripley. If so, then the gamble has failed, at least ...
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Reviews
The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train)
Dir: Patrice Leconte. France. 2002. 90 mins.One of the real audience-pleasers in competition at this year's Venice festival, The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train) pairs veteran French actor Jean Rochefort with rocker Johnny Hallyday in a changing-places comedy drama that manages to be both quirky and moving. Although ...
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Reviews
The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train)
Dir: Patrice Leconte. France. 2002. 90 mins.One of the real audience-pleasers in competition at this year's Venice festival, The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train) pairs veteran French actor Jean Rochefort with rocker Johnny Hallyday in a changing-places comedy drama that manages to be both quirky and moving. Although ...
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Reviews
Friday Night (Vendredi Soir)
Dir: Claire Denis. France. 2002. 88mins.A man and a woman, complete strangers, meet by chance in Paris and, after the briefest of verbal exchanges, end up having long, passionate sex. But don't be fooled: Friday Night (Vendredi Soir) is as much about traffic jams and unfamiliar neighbourhoods as it is ...
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Reviews
The Nearest To Heaven (Au Plus Pres Du Paradis)
Dir: Tonie Marshall. Fr-Can-Sp. 2002. 97mins.Tonie Marshall's latest outing proves again that no amount of screenplay physics can make up for a lack of chemistry between leading man and leading lady. And the pairing of Catherine Deneuve-William Hurt, however intriguing it looks on paper, fizzles and dies in this flat ...