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Film Reviews
by
Joanne Laurier
25 June 2008
Young@Heart: Not going
gentle ...
17 June 2008
Standard Operating Procedure:
Images from a neo-colonial war
6 June 2008
Before the Rains: Hazarding
the deeper waters of colonialism
24 April 2008
Under the Same Moon:
Something lost en route
9 April 2008
Stop-Loss: A serious and
moving effort, but what about that three-letter word?
29 March 2008
Snow Angels: Unnecessarily
slight insight into a dreary world
12 March 2008
Be Kind Rewind: Fast forward
to Michel Gondry's utopia
11 February 2008
The Savages: Throwing away
the aged
24 December 2007
The Walker: A shamefaced
political critique
2 November 2007
Michael
Clayton: The man who comes in from the cold
17 October 2007
What drove Sean Penn Into the Wild?
11 June 2007
Waitress and Mr. Brooks:
Somewhere in America...
4 June 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Spider-Man
3
The dilemma of blockbuster filmmaking
25 April 2007
The Situation: a drama
of the Iraq war
7 April 2007
The Namesake: for the most
part, a failure to "concentrate on the things that matter"
2 April 2007
Indigènes: The French
army's exploited North African soldiers
13 March 2007
Black Snake Moan and Zodiac:
No diamonds in the rough
8 March 2007
An exchange on Amazing Grace and the British
slave trade
2 March 2007
Amazing Grace: William
Wilberforce and the struggle to end the British slave trade
28 February 2007
An exchange on The Pursuit of Happyness
22 February 2007
Venus and The Pursuit
of Happyness: two films with a little something to say
3 February 2007
Two films based on novels: Notes on a Scandal
and The Painted Veil
27 January 2007
Freedom Writers: Truly
no child left behind
6 January 2007
The Good German: the cost
of playing fast and loose with big questions
16 December 2006
Filmmakers
turn their attention to Africa--with limited results
2 December 2006
Faux
Fur
11 November 2006
Catch a Fire: A story of
struggle against apartheid, but not the whole story
4 November 2006
Deliver Us from Evil: Whose
is the "most grievous fault"?
26 August 2006
Little Miss Sunshine: High
anxiety
8 August 2006
Woody Allen's Scoop: The decline is nothing
to gloat about
27 July 2006
Superman Returns, Pirates II, Clerks II: No 'fount of impressions and emotions' at present
20 July 2006
Mostly
a love affair with money and fame
5 June 2006
The Notorious Bettie Page
Sex and censorship in America
12 May 2006
United 93: Everything but
how and why it happened
20 April 2006
Dennis Gansel's Before the Fall
Training schools for Hitler's "Thousand-Year Reich"
25 March 2006
Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch: Diagnosing panic
and dread
6 March 2006
Classic Vidas Secas
by Nelson Pereira dos Santos released on DVD
"Hell" in Brazil
18 February 2006
A Good Woman, based on an Oscar Wilde play
A visit to the land of the hypocrites
8 February 2006
Woody Allen directs Match Point: No Dreiser
21 January 2006
Not so much fun for Dick and Jane
Fun with Dick and Jane, directed by Dean Paristot, screenplay
by Judd Apatow and Nicholas Stoller
17 January 2006
Classic African films released on DVD: Ousmane Sembène's
Borom Sarret and Black Girl
5 January 2006
Two recent films: Brokeback Mountain and Walk
the Line
28 November 2005
Larger mysteries left unsolved
Where the Truth Lies, written and directed by Atom Egoyan,
based on the novel by Rupert Holmes
18 November 2005
When is an 'antiwar film' not an antiwar film?
Jarhead, directed by Sam Mendes
12 November 2005
The pain you go through in this country to start a
new life ...
La Ciudad, directed by David Riker; Bolivia directed
by Adrián Caetano
31 October 2005
Serious problem, treated by not so serious people
North Country directed by Niki Caro
6 September 2005
Something's rotten...
The Constant Gardener, directed by Fernando Meirelles,
screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, based on the novel by John le Carré
27 August 2005
Films from Sally Potter and Tim Burton: thin and wearing
thin
Yes, directed by Sally Potter; Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, directed by Tim Burton
6 August 2005
Unfortunately the mystery largely remains
Mysterious Skin, written and directed by Gregg Araki,
based on a novel by Scott Heim
11 June 2005
Eight characters in search of an inner life
Palindromes, written and directed by Todd Solondz
28 May 2005
The essential things go unexplained
Crash, directed by Paul Haggis
7 May 2005
What world is this?
The Interpreter, directed by Sydney Pollack
17 March 2005
To "hold the world but as the world..."
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, directed
by Michael Radford
18 February 2005
Film on the verge of a nervous breakdown La mala
educación [Bad Education], written and directed by
Pedro Almodóvar
8 January 2005
“We’re all a pack of strays”
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, directed by Wes Anderson
15 December 2004
Sexual pioneer
Kinsey, written and directed by Bill Condon
2 December 2004
Perhaps a step backward
Sideways, directed by Alexander Payne
11 November 2004
The "Good Woman" of North London
Vera Drake written and directed by Mike Leigh
12 October 2004
Toronto International Film Festival 2004--Part 5
Limited range
2 October 2004
Toronto International Film Festival 2004-Part 3
Orphaned by history
25 August 2004
The Corporation: a reformist
plea for state regulation
5 July 2004
Documentary on Al-Jazeera and Iraq war Rather timid considering the circumstances
Control Room written and directed by Jehane Noujaim
16 June 2004
Smug and rather pointless
Coffee and Cigarettes written and directed by Jim Jarmusch
23 March 2004
American militarism through a somewhat paranoid prism
Spartan, written and directed by David Mamet
3 March 2004
Sincere, but avoiding difficult questions
City of God, directed by Fernando Meirelles
18 February 2004
Creating the past in their own self-involved image
Girl with a Pearl Earring
24 January 2004
Tall tales tell only part of the story
Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton
9 January 2004
A few ounces of self-indulgence
21 Grams, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
30 December 2003
A
song, an era that still haunt us
27 November 2003
Facts but no framework
Shattered Glass, directed by Billy Ray; Veronica Guerin,
directed by Joel Schumacher
15 November 2003
The entanglement with life
The Human Stain
1 September 2003
The heartless of a heartless world
The Magdalene Sisters
12 June 2003
Two films about Latin America: distortion and reaction
Assassination Tango and The Dancer Upstairs
31 May 2003
The plight of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution: two films
Shanghai Ghetto and Nowhere in Africa
14 April 2003
On love and pain
Divine Intervention, a film by Elia Suleiman
27 March 2003
Talking about not too much, unfortunately
Talk to Her, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
8 March 2003
X-raying postwar Japan
Ikiru (1952)
28 February 2003
The opposite of what's needed
The Life of David Gale
17 January 2003
A life's labor's lost
About Schmidt, directed by Alexander Payne
16 December 2002
A terrible story badly told
Ararat, written and directed by Atom Egoyan
30 November 2002
When the music's over, turn out the lights
Standing in the Shadow of Motown, directed by Paul Justman
7 November 2002
What made Frida Kahlo remarkable?
Frida, directed by Julie Taymor
28 September 2002
Toronto
International Film Festival 2002:
Eight films
25 July 2002
Filthy lives have filthy consequences
Road to Perdition, directed by Sam Mendes
28 June 2002
Confusion on every score
The Believer, directed and written by Henry Bean
6 June 2002
Insomnia, directed by Christopher
Nolan
Once again, independent of what?
27 May 2002
San Francisco International Film Festival 2002--Part
2
Four films
9 May 2002
Woody Allen's latest
Hollywood Ending, written and directed by Woody Allen
30 March 2002
The view from the oasis
Monsoon Wedding, directed by Mira Nair
15 March 2002
"Carlucci" bleeped from HBO version of Lumumba
Ex-CIA official threatened lawsuit
13 February 2002
A woman in war
Charlotte Gray, directed by Gillian Armstrong
24 January 2002
Bosnian film: no finger-pointing?
No Man's Land, written and directed by Danis Tanovic
12 December 2001
US cable channel whitewashes the CIA
Into the Shadows: The CIA in Hollywood, written, produced
and directed by Charles C. Stuart
21 November 2001
Infernal relations of rich and poor
From Hell, directed by Allen and Albert Hughes
4 October 2001
2001 Toronto International Film Festival--Part 3
Struggling, alive, contradictory...
30 August 2001
The curse of the self-involved Manhattanite
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, written and directed by
Woody Allen
13 July 2001
Only elements of a critique
The Anniversary Party, written and directed by Jennifer
Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming
7 June 2001
2001 San Francisco International Film Festival--Part
1
Six films
5 June 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema--Part 4
Some Argentine films
1 June 2001
Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent
Cinema-Part 3
Problems in Latin American cinema
10 March 2001
Rebel in need of a cause
The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn
8 February 2001
The official version
Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Stephen
Gaghan
9 January 2001
Must we celebrate Sade?
Quills, directed by Philip Kaufman, screenplay by Doug
Wright, based on his play
18 December 2000
Art and working class life, an attempt
Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry, screenplay by
Lee Hall
28 October 2000
Impeachment not revisited
The Contender, written and directed by Rod Lurie
3 July 1999
A watering down of Wilde
An Ideal Husband, directed by Oliver Parker; adapted by
Parker, from the play by Oscar Wilde |
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