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2/26/06 - Sense and Sensibility: (Patrick Doyle) --Expanded Review--
"Looking back at the early to mid-1990's, the age seemed ripe for Jane Austin dramas. The big
costume period-piece flair for dramatics was experiencing a renaissance at the time, not
restricted only to the adaptations of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice,
Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility. With Hollywood stuck in
eighteenth-century England for much of the decade, it's no surprise that Sense and
Sensibility was such a success with both critics and awards nominators. The film does have
merit; it was a surprisingly good adaptation of the Austin story by lead actress Emma Thompson
herself, and the supporting cast led by Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman (in a charmingly rare
gentleman's performance) counterbalanced the on-cue bumbling of Hugh Grant. For detractors of
the kind of ridiculous structure of society resurrected in these Austin tales, Sense and
Sensibility is an insipid bore, with the sort of mindbogglingly trivial romance of the era
that indeed nearly ruins the larger, overarching themes of the maturing process..." **** Read the entire review.
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2/23/06 - Hamlet (1996): (Patrick Doyle) --Expanded Review-- "While
directing Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, and co-starring in Othello,
actor/screenwriter/director Kenneth Branagh had always dreamt of bringing an ultimate version
of William Shakespeare's Hamlet to the big screen. Through history, actors such as John
Gielgud, Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, and Mel Gibson had appeared in the title role, and
Branagh was prepared to tackle the role with all the authenticity that the original story
conveyed. Unlike the other interpretations of the story, Branagh's
Hamlet would feature every word of dialogue from the play, causing a massive running
time of over four hours that would necessitate an intermission. Despite this length, Branagh's
idea worked, with the film providing a much more rounded and understandable tapestry than
shorter interpretations. Also of note is that Branagh doesn't force the story to brood in
despair, allowing for the more positive moments to shine clearly. Reception of the film by
audiences was cool if only because of the huge running time..." *** Read the
entire review.
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2/20/06 - Arsène Lupin: (Debbie Wiseman) --All New
Review-- "Despite his anonymity in the United States, Arsène Lupin
is a well-known character in Europe. Author Maurice Leblanc created Lupin
in a series of twenty novels nearly a century ago, and his popularity since
has extended to various television series, film adaptations, and an anime
series about Lupin's grandson in Japan. The character is a gentleman thief
who serves as France's combination of Batman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond.
A rogue trained by his father as a master of disguise and aristocratic
manners, he (unlike his father) vows not to kill anyone no matter the
circumstances. Falling in love and falling into involvement with perpetual
plans of scheming royalists to re-establish the French Monarchy, Lupin leads
a life of intrigue and extraordinary beauty in a Gothic environment of
shades of black. This 2004 adaptation produced by the U.K., Italy, and
France, was directed by Jean-Paul Salomé and released initially in
France before opening across the world in 2005...."
***** Read the entire
review.
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2/17/06 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
(Howard Shore) --Updated Review-- "With the vast success of the entire
Peter Jackson trilogy and the inevitable extended cuts of the films on DVD, a
better treatment than the original score albums for each of the three The
Lord of the Rings films has been in the works for a while. The original
albums contained significantly edited and rearranged snippets of score that
often made little sense when compared to what was heard in the films, though
this editing was necessary to give fans what essentially amounted to a "best of"
album for each film. But those edits didn't have the luxury of choosing to
include supplemental material that Shore wrote after the theatrical releases to
accommodate Jackson's longer DVD cuts. Four years later, the first of the
expanded CD releases hits commercial store shelves for a whopping $50 (or
more), causing fans of the trilogy to salivate in anticipation. Of all three
films, it could be argued that The Fellowship of the Ring was the most
mistreated by its original album edit..." ***** Read the entire
review.
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2/14/06 - Fateless: (Ennio Morricone) --All New Review-- "Based on the
1975 autobiographical novel by Imre Kertesz, and adapted to the screen by the Nobel
Prize-winner himself, Fateless is an impressionistic
telling of one teenage boy's experiences in Hitler's death camps, and his equally alienating
experiences after liberation. It is the directorial debut for cinematographer Lajos Koltai,
who applies his keen sense of disturbing beauty into a film that for the most part avoids the
representations of evil common to movie perceptions about the Final Solution, instead treating
the villains of the story as bystanders to the boy's internal turmoil. Although uplifting in
the fact that the boy obviously survives several camps, Fateless is still a largely
somber and horrific portrayal of a kid whose soul has been stolen and turns away several
opportunities at emotional redemption. Kertesz was ecstatic to have the opportunity to work
with veteran composer Ennio Morricone, whose career in Italy since receding from the American
spotlight has hardly missed a beat...." **** Read the entire review.
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2/11/06 - The Constant Gardener: (Alberto Iglesias) --All New Review--
"Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles brings one of John Le Carre's most angry novels to life
in The Constant Gardener, a tale with all the
fragmented clues of a usual Le Carre story but with a vicious side of distrust against the
pharmaceutical industry. A murder mystery and possible love triangle is a front in The
Constant Gardener for a larger commentary about the actions of drug companies that test
products on people in Africa without much respect for their lives. The setting here is Kenya,
the drugs are HIV related, and the characters are a British diplomat and a medical activist
who marry without really getting to know one another first. When the activist is killed at a
roadblock, her husband searches the lurid and confusing cues with relentless focus, attempting
to determine exactly why she had been killed (and learning more than he probably wanted to
know in the first place). The film was critically praised almost across the board..." ** Read the entire review.
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2/8/06 - Sahara: (Clint Mansell) --All New Review-- "The character of
Dirk Pitt has come a long way on the big screen in the last 25 years, but not necessarily in
the same way you'd think of other famous characters' progressions. When last we saw Dirk Pitt
in an action/adventure film
like Sahara was in 1980, when the character was played by Richard Jordan in the
outrageously expensive Raise the Titanic. In 2005, we get to see the character dumbed
down to Matthew McConaughey levels in Saraha, a project which caused original writer
Clive Cussler to throw tantrums about its adaptations. To have perfectly adapted his novel to
the screen, a running time of four hours would have been required, but that didn't stop
Cussler from rejecting several drafts of the script (which was as painstakingly loyal as
possible) before he eventually went ahead and sued Paramount over the final draft that was
shot for the theatres. Perhaps audiences should have sued Cussler..." **** Read the
entire review.
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2/5/06 - Valiant: (George Fenton) --Updated Review-- "A digitally
animated British film from Vanguard Studios, Valiant was co-produced by the producer of
Shrek and is aimed at British audiences with its all-British cast and stubborn English
humor. It's the United Kingdom's attempt to capture the same enthusiasm (and box office) as
Aardman Animation's Chicken Run of several years ago, and there's just enough humor
aimed at Americans in Valiant to make the film viable for an international audience as
well. It's a hard stretch to say that the film is very loosely based on real
events given that the story involves a patriotic pigeon who decides to go to
war for King and country in the Royal Homing Pigeon Service during World War II. But the
British military actually gave medals for bravery to carrier pigeons at the time, so one could
conceivably say that the story is partly based on true events. All joking aside, the film's
animation is adequate, and the voices of everyone from Ewan McGregor to John Cleese bless the
variety of pigeons and other birds on screen..." *** Read the entire review.
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