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Reviews
Alila (2003)
Love, hate and petty squabbling in contemporary Israel
Inevitably perhaps for a contemporary Israeli film, the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians looms over the lives of Alila's protagonists: in the film's opening scene, one of the main characters - a man of 18 or 19 - is on his way to an army barracks; several times during the film we overhear reports of suicide attacks on a radio in the background. But for most of the film, we're more occupied with the personal lives of the protagonists, whose problems (why do I keep seeing this person? why doesn't my ex-spouse just leave me alone?) are more universal.
And, on the whole, these people's lives keep us reasonably well entertained for 2 hours. They're an interesting enough bunch and the cast is consistently strong. But for me, the film is ultimately let down by its script: the dialogues are flat at times, the protagonists rarely get the chance to show more than one side of their character, and - despite showing us all manner of human folly - the tone is a bit heavy side. A film worth seeing, but no masterpiece.
Imagining Argentina (2003)
An Englishman's Argentina
Imagining Argentina turns out to be exactly the movie suggested by the title... a not-too-literal outsider's take on what the extra-judicial disappearances in 1970s Argentina might have been like. As a result, it will potentially be highly annoying to anyone with any connection to Argentina - not only do the actors contrive to speak in an irritatingly accented English, but several key scenes play (deliberately?) fast and loose with history. This in itself is not necessarily a problem - after all we were warned by the title not to expect a historically literal film - but in my view the resulting mish-mash of the plausible and the implausible is not particularly successful.
That said, the film does fulfil the director's stated purpose of drawing world attention to a dark period of Argentina's history - maybe it's worthwhile just for that.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
Sharp, funny but is this a Coen movie?
I saw Intolerable Cruelty at the Venice Film Festival, at an outdoor public screening for a mainly Italian audience, and I can't remember the last time an audience laughed so much during a movie. Intolerable Cruelty is very, very funny - both Clooney and Zeta-Jones play their roles as rich, spoiled and bored society animals to perfection.
That said, as a fan of the Coens, I came away in a good mood but slightly disappointed by the movie. Maybe the genius of the Big Lebowski has set our expectations too high... but in my view this film is just a bit too sleek and the humour is just a bit too in-your-face to count among the classic Coen films. Yes, the script is smart and well-paced to the end, but only the opening scene, where a manic Geoffrey Rush comes home to find his wife (Zeta-Jones) has been misbehaving, has any of the black, sardonic humour of their earlier movies.