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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 57
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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 ...
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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 ...