BILL KAVANAGH Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB. USA, 2007. Kavanagh Productions. Cinematography by Peter Stein. Produced by Bill Kavanagh. Music by Miki Navazlo. Film Editing by Sylke Fröchtenigt. Segregation is not just a problem in the southern United States, as this key example of a controversial housing project in the state of New York makes clear. Decades after neighbourhoods had…
Category: 2007
Girl 27 (2007)
DAVID STENN Bil’s rating (out of 5): BB.5. USA, 2007. TLR Productions. Screenplay by David Stenn. Cinematography by Peter B. Good. Produced by David Stenn. Music by Hal Lindes. Production Design by Shawn Berry. Film Editing by Tessa Davis. In the days when all of Hollywood was run by a handful of studios that operated as kingdoms of entertainment, MGM…
The Invasion
BBB.5 (out of 5) Fourth version of the classic Jack Finney novel, this time with Nicole Kidman as a doctor who becomes aware that there are visitors who blending in a bit too easily. She’s a psychiatrist whose patient (Veronica Cartwright, who also appears in the Philip Kaufman version) insists that her husband is not the…
Alexandra (Aleksandra)
BBBB (out of 5) Famed opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya makes a rare foray into film acting and does not come off in the least bit an amateur. She plays a woman who rides a military train to Chechnya to visit a barracks where her grandson is stationed as a captain. Once there she roams the…
St. Trinian’s
B (out of 5) Ronald Searle’s darkly funny comic panels, which inspired a slew of films in the sixties, have been resurrected in the form of this empty comedy. It is set at a girls’ boarding school beleaguered by bad management and even worse students, where young Talulah Riley is taken to live by her irresponsible…
Beaufort
BBB.5 (out of 5) Israeli soldiers are stationed at a centuries-old fort during the Lebanon war just before the country’s withdrawal from the territory. The varied group of young men, whose personalities clash more often than cleave, see little action but plenty of friction as conflict wanes but danger still abounds. The objective is to abandon…
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
BBB.5 (out of 5) Year five and counting. Following the tete-a-tete between Harry Potter and Voldemort (a noseless Ralph Fiennes) and the unfortunate demise of Harry’s friend Cedric in the last installment, the magical world of witches and wizards is steeped into a frenzy of paranoid conservatism: the leader of the Ministry of Magic refuses…
Premonition
BB (out of 5) Sandra Bullock is apparently living too linear a life and needs art to mix her up a bit; first she was out of temporal sync with lover Keanu Reeves in The Lake House, and now her husband can’t decide whether or not he’s dead. Bullock plays a suburban housewife who wakes…
Hot Fuzz (2007)
EDGAR WRIGHT Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBBB. United Kingdom/France, 2007. StudioCanal, Working Title Films, Big Talk Productions, Ingenious Film Partners. Screenplay by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg. Cinematography by Jess Hall. Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Nira Park. Music by David Arnold. Production Design by Marcus Rowland. Costume Design by Annie Hardinge. Film Editing by Chris Dickens. The makers of Shaun Of The Dead have returned with…
My Blueberry Nights
BB (out of 5) Following the international success of In The Mood For Love and the critical adoration of 2046, it could come as no surprise that Wong Kar Wai’s next move would be to break into the English market. It was a project highly anticipated given the combination of his genius directorial power combined…
Year Of The Dog
B (out of 5) Molly Shannon loses her beloved beagle to an accidental poisoning and is devastated. When she meets a pet clinic employee (Peter Sarsgaard) with a love for animals equal to hers, she thinks she has found the perfect replacement relationship until she discovers that he is celibate. Settling for the next best thing,…
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End
BB (out of 5) Johnny Depp hilariously sashays his way through another overblown mess in this third pirate adventure inspired by the Disneyland ride. Picking up where the last chapter left off (the two films were actually filmed together), the film has crew members Geoffrey Rush, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom sailing to the ends of the earth…
