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All articles by Lee Marshall – Page 59
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Reviews
At The Tips Of Her Fingers (Sur Le Bout Des Doigts)
Dir: Yves Angelo. France. 2002. 83mins.The latest feature from Yves Angelo is a small but compelling story that hinges on an unbalanced mother's jealousy of her talented piano-playing daughter. Although some audiences will feel that At The Tips Of Her Fingers leaves a little too much left unsaid, its careful ...
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Reviews
Ticket To Jerusalem
Dir: Rashid Masharawi. Palestine-Netherlands. 2002. 84 mins.Hyped as the scoop at this year's Taormina Film Festival, Ticket To Jerusalem turns out to be a worthy but rather flat and one-sided fable about a Palestinian projectionist trying to show a film in occupied Jerusalem. With its made-in-Palestine tag and its film-on-film ...
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Reviews
Just A Kiss
Dir: Fisher Stevens. US. 2001. 90mins.This New York ensemble comedy is like a drunk at a party. It thinks it's being witty, kooky and perceptive, but to those of us on the other side of the cranium, it's just slurring its speech. Director Fisher Stevens is a stage, film ...
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Reviews
Happy Times (Xingfu Shiguang)
Dir: Zhang Yimou. China-US. 2000. 96minsThe first film from Edward R Pressman and Terrence Malick's Sunflower Productions, Zhang Yimou 's Happy Times is a Chaplinesque sentimental comedy which has its moments of greatness. Even during the more pedestrian scenes, it is difficult not to be warmed by this winning tale ...
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Reviews
Winter (L'Inverno)
Dir: Nina di Majo. Italy. 2002. 100 mins.A great performance by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is not enough to save this self-indulgent ensemble piece by young Neapolitan director Nina di Majo. It's a sad truth that most films are lost or saved in the first few minutes, and the opening of ...
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Reviews
Casomai
Dir: Alessandro D'Alatri. Italy. 2002. 116mins.Alessandro D'Alatri is back with a stylish romantic comedy which draws more than any of his previous outings on his other job - directing TV commercials. Set in contemporary Milan, Casomai will appeal to the generation it depicts: urban professional thirtysomethings, caught between work, the ...
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Reviews
The Hour Of Religion (L'Ora di Religione)
Dir: Marco Bellocchio. Italy. 2002. 103mins.The term "auteur" is not much used these days outside of ironic quotation marks. But it is difficult to think of a better description for Italian director Marco Bellocchio, now well into his fourth creative decade. The story of an atheist painter who suddenly discovers ...
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Reviews
Dandy (La Bande Du Drugstore)
Dir: Francois Armanet. France. 2001. 98 mins.Dandy suffers from some of the same superficiality as the posturing, blow-dried youths it portrays. It's difficult to see this film, about Parisian rich kids during the mid to late 1960s, appealing to their modern-day peers in the 16 to 20-year-old age group, who ...
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Reviews
The Best Day Of My Life (Il Piu Bel Giorno Della Mia Vita)
Dir: Cristina Comencini. Italy-UK 2002. 102 mins.Like all of Cristina Comencini's films, The Best Day Of My Life is about relationships: family relationships, sexual relationships and the troubled relationship between the two. A large ensemble piece, it features some of the strongest acting talents on the Italian scene, from veteran ...
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News
Killing Me Softly
Dir: Chen Kaige. US. 2002. 99mins.The real mystery about this unconvincing MGM film noir is what Chen Kaige is doing directing it. Perhaps the lukewarm reception afforded to his most recent Chinese outing, The Emperor And The Assassin, persuaded the director to try his luck with a thoroughly Western film. ...
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Reviews
From Nought To Ten (Dazeroadiec)
Dir: Luciano Ligabue. Italy, 2002. 100mins.Italian rockstar Luciano Ligabue rather showed up the country's army of under- achieving full-time directors when his first film, Radiofreccia, turned out to be both a critical and a commercial success. But hubris - at least on the critical front - has not been long ...
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Reviews
Amnesia
Dir: Gabriele Salvatores. Italy/Spain. 2002. 114mins.Amnesia is the second 'little' film to be fired off by Gabriele Salvatores while he tries to raise the funds to make an adaptation of Amitav Ghosh's novel The Calcutta Chromosome. Teeth (Denti, 2000) was a curious tale of precarious dental and mental health which ...
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Reviews
Monday Morning (Lundi Matin)
Dir: Otar Iosselliani. Fr/It, 2002. 122 mins.The first ten minutes of Georgian director Otar Iosselliani's delicate new film break all those script workshop rules about snappy, cut-to-the-chase montage. We see a man getting up, having breakfast, going downstairs, crossing a muddy yard, getting into his car, driving, parking, catching the ...
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Reviews
The Trespasser (O Invasor)
Dir: Beto Brant. Brazil, 2001. 98mins.Ten years ago, Brazilian cinema was almost dead and buried. But Beto Brant's third full-length feature is further proof that the revival that hit paydirt with Walter Salles' Central Station is far from over. The Trespasser, which screened in Berlin after an outing at Sundance, ...
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Reviews
The Three Marias
Dir Aluizio Abranches. It-Brazil. 2002. 103mins.Part Brazilian Western, part Jacobean tragedy in Tarantino sauce, Aluizio Abranches’ The Three Marias is a stylish follow up to the London-trained director’s 1999 debut, the festival-pleasing A Glass Of Rage (Un Copo De Colera). This was a surprise indie hit in Italy - which ...
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Reviews
Amen
Dir: Costa-Gavras. France. 2001. 132mins.Costa-Gavras is no stranger to controversy; in fact, the hard-hitting political expose has become something of his stock-in-trade. But in the 20 years since Missing, the Greek-born director has struggled to find a distinctive voice. Betrayed and Music Box, his two collaborations with screenplay king Joe ...
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Reviews
A Map Of The Heart (Der Felsen)
Dir: Dominik Graf. Germany, 2002. 117mins.The second of three German films in competition at Berlin, A Map Of The Heart is a story of mixed-up emotions and crossed destinies set on the island of Corsica. Shot in mini-DV, the film is also unusual in its narrative structure - based on ...
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Reviews
Uncle Frank
Dir: Matthew Ginsburg. US, 2002. 84 mins.The first documentary to be produced by Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Productions, Uncle Frank is an affectionate, touching and often hilariously funny portrait of the director's octagenarian uncle, who plays the electric piano in old people's homes. Although it deals frankly (so to speak) ...
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Reviews
Sound Of Brazil (Moro No Brasil)
Dir: Mika Kaurismaki. Ger/Fin/Fra/Brazil, 2002. 105 mins.A well-known European arthouse director goes on a musical pilgrimage in a Latin American country. Sounds familiar, no' Echoes of Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club come thick and fast in this roots-of-Samba documentary by cuddly Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki. But in the end, ...
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Reviews
Happy Times (Xingfu Shiguang)
Dir: Zhang Yimou. China/US. 2000. 96mins The first film from Edward R Pressman and Terrence Malick's Sunflower Productions, Zhang Yimou 's Happy Times is a Chaplinesque sentimental comedy which has its moments of greatness. Even during the more pedestrian scenes, it is difficult not to be warmed by ...