After The WeddingDirected by: Susanne BierIFCDanish director Susanne Bier (Brothers) delivers a dynamite melodrama about an ex-pat (Mads Mikkelsen, Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) returning to Copenhagen to raise money for an orphanage in India and discovering the legacy of his youth in a daughter he’s never known.Carsten KnoxCategories: Best of the year (2007)
Carsten Knox
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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Directed by: Alex Gibney(HDNet Films)Of the five documentaries nominated at this year’s Academy Awards, this look at the financial scandal that bankrupted the massive American corporation Enron is one of three available now on DVD, along with March of the Penguins and Murderball. All are worthy, though this […]
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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Kiss Kiss Bang BangDirected by: Shane Black(Warner Home Video)Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black returns with a strangely twisted throwback to the buddy comedies of the ’80s, but with a self-referential edge and a swimming pool full of laughs. The plot is ridiculously farcical and convoluted, but see it for Robert Downey Jr. in typically frantic […]
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Me and You and Everyone We Know
Published December 08, 2005. Me and You and Everyone We Know Directed by: Miranda July (Alliance) Unapologetically quirky, Miranda July’s first feature is a love story and character study set in a no-name suburban town, very familiar to anyone who saw Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World. This is about the wisdom of children and the innocence […]
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Oldboy
OldboyDirected by: Chan-wook Park (Show East)Have you been feeling a deficiency of real thrills in your revenge thrillers? Perhaps a lack of imagination or a hesitancy of the director to take real risks? Check out Oldboy, the most heralded of a new wave of Korean films. Min-sik Choi is Dae-su Oh, a bit of a […]
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Down in the Valley
Down in the ValleyDirected by: David Jacobson (Thinkfilm)Harlan (Edward Norton) is a cowboy in a gas station, and Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood) the teenage “valley” girl he sets his hat towards, though not if her gun-lovin’ daddy Wade (David Morse) has anything to say in the matter. The story doesn’t get much more complex than […]
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The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada(Columbia TriStar)In this modern-day western, actor-director Tommy Lee Jones delivers one of the year’s most unexpected and moving dramas. The fragmented first reel introduces a large ensemble cast that quickly closes in to just a few: Texas ranch worker (Jones) brings the body of his friend into Mexico while kidnapping […]
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Perfume: The Story of a MurdererDirected by: Tom TykwerConstantin FilmJean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) is born into the filth and fish markets of pre-revolutionary Paris with the gift of superhuman olfactory abilities: His sense of smell is one in a million. Becoming an apprentice to a perfumer (a distracting Dustin Hoffman) Grenouille learns what goes into […]
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Dear Frankie
Dear FrankieDirected by: Shona Auerbach(Pathée Pictures)Scottish single mum Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) and nine-year-old Frankie (Jack McElhone) are perpetually on the move, as we are informed by Frankie’s voiceover. Frankie is deaf, so the VO is pretty much the only time we hear his voice. It crops up when he writes letters to his father, who […]
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The Fate of The Artist
The Fate of The ArtistEddie CampbellFirst SecondAs a memoirist, Eddie Campbell could be described as willfully obscuring. His minimalist artwork on Alan Moore’s titanic Jack the Ripper tome From Hell tended to reveal truths in the darkness, whereas his Alec series (the titular hero a character standing in for the author), though also based on […]
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The Corporation
Published December 08, 2005. The Corporation Directed by: Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott (Mongrel Media) A primer for anti-globalization, this long but fascinating Canadian-made documentary touches upon economic greed in many, many forms by comparing the corporate model with a psychopathic personality. More even-handed than Michael Moore, it’s essential viewing as part of the new wave […]
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The Lives of Others
The Lives of OthersDirected by: Florian Henckel von DonnersmarckMongrel MediaAcademy Award winner in 2007 for best Foreign Language film, this beat out the healthiest field in years, including the fairy tale horror Pan’s Labyrinth. The story is of the final days of East Germany behind the Iron Curtain, and how a Stasi eavesdropper gets caught […]
