All articles by Sheila Johnston – Page 3
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Reviews
The Son (Le Fils)
Dirs: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Belgium/ France. 2002. 103 mins.The Dardennes' austere and uncompromising aesthetic is back on full display in The Son, a minutely observed, dramatically compelling study of the violent emotions seething below the drab surface of working-class lives. Not exactly an easy sell, in other words, which ...
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Reviews
Divine Intervention (Yadon Ilaheyya)
Dir: Elia Suleiman. France-Palestine. 2002. 92mins. Subtitled a "chronicle of love and pain", Elia Suleiman's second feature belies its own maudlin-sounding description and reinvents the tragic tensions in Palestine as a deadpan, slow-burning, almost silent comedy. Lacing the surreal apocalyptic humour of Roy Andersson's Songs From The Second Floor with ...
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Reviews
About Schmidt
Dir: Alexander Payne. US. 2002. 125 mins. Screened in CompetitionUnderplaying the overt social satire of Citizen Ruth and Election, Alexander Payne's remorselessly interior dramedy is centred squarely on a single character, and narrower in focus and more pessimistic in tone than either of its predecessors. About Schmidt also abandons the ...
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Reviews
REVIEW: About Schmidt
Dir: Alexander Payne. US. 2002. 125 mins. Screened in CompetitionUnderplaying the overt social satire of Citizen Ruth and Election, Alexander Payne's remorselessly interior dramedy is centred squarely on a single character, and narrower in focus and more pessimistic in tone than either of its predecessors. About Schmidt also abandons the ...
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Reviews
All Or Nothing
Dir: Mike Leigh. UK-France 2002. 127 mins.After a brief detour into history (and real-life individuals) with his 1999 Gilbert and Sullivan drama, Topsy Turvy, Mike Leigh returns to more familiar terrain with this subtle, precisely observed contemporary story of ordinary South London folk. Comic but also melancholy - although it ...
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Reviews
REVIEW: Marie-Jo And Her Two Lovers
Dir: Robert Guediguian. France. 2001. 124 mins.In CompetitionRobert Guediguian's recent work has fallen into two distinct categories: his tough social stories set in Marseilles (A La Place Du Coeur; La Ville Est Tranquille) and the lighter "contes", or fantasies (Marius Et Jeanette; A L'Attaque!) set in L'Estaque, the working-class port ...
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Reviews
Thunderpants
Dir: Peter Hewitt. UK-Germany. 2002. 84mins. The big selling point of Thunderpants for its target audience will also be the main deterrent for their chaperones: the idea of a nondescript, none-too-bright 10-year-old boy with a single extraordinary talent for farting. Our hero's peer group will, of course, love this premise. ...
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Reviews
Femme Fatale
Dir: Brian De Palma. Fr-US 2002. 110mins. With its chances and coincidences, doubles, dream sequences and alternative endings, Femme Fatale is an enigmatic European art-movie lightly disguised as a Hollywood genre thriller. There is certainly enough eye-popping sex and spectacle to steer it to decent box-office returns. In France ...
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Reviews
Biggie & Tupac
Dir: Nick Broomfield. UK. 2001. 107mins. The ostensible subject of Nick Broomfield's first feature since Kurt & Courtney, his controversial 1998 film about the suicide of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, is the unresolved murders of rap stars Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Its actual subject is much the same as ...
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Reviews
Ali G IndaHouse
Dir: Mark Mylod. UK. 2002. 88 mins. A send-up of white kids trying to act black, Sacha Baron Cohen's alter ego Ali G has cut quite a figure on UK TV, making a fool of celebrities like David Beckham. He has shot a video with Madonna (Music). Now he has ...
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Reviews
Bend It Like Beckham
Dir: Gurinder Chadha. UK. 2001. 110mins.Gurinder Chadha's high-spirited, unassuming comedy about a football-mad Indian girl living in London is a real charmer which should score with teenagers but also has strong crossover potential. In the UK it will coast on the successful new wave of popular Asian comedy of which ...
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Reviews
About A Boy
Dirs: Paul and Chris Weitz. UK/US. 2002. 100minsWill Britain's latest semi-confessional romantic comedy be the new Bridget Jones's Diary' It certainly has the right ingredients: a powerful combination of best-selling novelist Nick Hornby, Hugh Grant and the confident, commercial touch which co-producers Working Title have brought to this genre in ...
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Reviews
24 Hour Party People
Dir: Michael Winterbottom. UK. 2001. 110mins.Anarchic, exasperating and ambitious, Michael Winterbottom's boisterous celebration of 16 rollercoaster years in Manchester's club scene is a real oddball item whose eventual cult status could - like that of the music it portrays - outstrip its commercial performance by miles. A young urban crowd ...
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Reviews
24 Hour Party People
Dir: Michael Winterbottom. UK. 2001. 110mins.Anarchic, exasperating and ambitious, Michael Winterbottom's boisterous celebration of 16 rollercoaster years in Manchester's club scene is a real oddball item whose eventual cult status could - like that of the music it portrays - outstrip its commercial performance by miles. A young urban crowd ...
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Reviews
On The Road To Emmaus
Dir: Markku Polonen. Finland. 2001. 77mins.Markku Polonen has been on Finland's film-making scene for nearly two decades, but On The Road To Emmaus buzzes with the irrepressible anarchic spirit of a first or second feature. Premiered in Helsinki last October, the film had local critics calling Polonen a Finnish Fellini ...
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Reviews
Stones (Piedras)
Dir: Ramon Salazar. Spain. 2001. 130mins.Some Spanish critics have seen Ramon Salazar as Pedro Almodovar's heir, and Stones certainly looks on paper like a sequel to the latter's 1991 comedy High Heels: it tells five women's interlocking stories through their feelings about their feet. The female-dominated subject, a light scattering ...
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Reviews
Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven
Dir: Daniel Burman. Argentina/Spain. 2001. 98mins.A brooding, fatalistic romance, faintly reminiscent of Julio Medem's Lovers Of The Arctic Circle or Vincent Ward's A Map Of The Human Heart in mood, Every Stewardess Goes To Heaven establishes third-time director Daniel Burman as a talent to watch. Burman's first two films, A ...
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Reviews
Walking On Water
Dir: Tony Ayres. Australia. 2002. 90 mins.An exploration of premature death and how to grieve for a loved one who had lived outside of a conventional family, Walking On Water resembles Longtime Companion (1990) and similar independent American films to emerge from the Aids epidemic in the early Nineties; it ...
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Reviews
On_Line
Dir: Jed Weintrob. USA. 2001. 85mins.A romantic comedy about a group of young New Yorkers looking for sex and possibly even love on the Internet, On_Line offers a refreshing alternative to such feeble Hollywood attempts to milk the theme as the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks movie You've Got Mail. Shot in ...
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Reviews
Baader
Dir: Christopher Roth. Germany. 2002. 129mins.As all Sixties survivors know, that decade had nothing to do with political protest. This portrait of Andreas Baader, the founder, with Ulrike Meinhof, of the notorious Baader-Meinhof group, reveals what it was really about: spouting vague revolutionary slogans, listening to some rather good music ...