A speed freak is sent to live with his military officer father in Tokyo but gets caught up in the underground world of drift racing.
A speed freak is sent to live with his military officer father in Tokyo but gets caught up in the underground world of drift racing.
An isolated father and daughter grapple with the limits of family and sexuality.
Here's the outrageously funny comedy about two sports fans so desperate to see their team win the championship game they'll do anything to ensure the victory! Jimmy (Dan Aykroyd - Ghostbusters) and his best friend Mike (Daniel Stern - Home Alone) are to obsessed with their hometown basketball team the Boston Celtics that they kidnap the opposing team's star player (Damon Wayans - The Last Boy Scout) the night before the championship game. From there the chaos escalates into an ir
A 2002 Mike Leigh drama, All or Nothing is at times almost unbearably bleak and poignant, yet funny, truthful and richly rewarding. The film's revolves around Timothy Spall's mini-cab driver, his family and the various characters and acquaintances on the South-east London estate where he lives. It's perhaps even better than Secrets and Lies, in which Spall also starred, which was marred a little by some of the tearful excesses of Brenda Blethyn's bravura performance. It's evidence that Leigh has matured and improved with age, rather than mellowed and softened. He's developed into a highly distinctive but rounded and humane filmmaker. Spall's cabbie is too gentle and thoughtful to be described as a slob, but his lack of even the most basic ambition and stoic non-resistance to life has created an unspoken rift between him and wife Penny (Lesley Manville). Working on a supermarket checkout, she must cook dinner and fend off insults from her fat, frustrated, obnoxious 18-year-old son Rory. She receives only passive sympathy from her older daughter Rachel. Only when Rory is taken ill is Phil snapped out of his torpor as the family pull together. A host of minor characters also feature; fatuous cabbie Ron (Paul Jesson) his alcoholic wife and sluttish daughter, as well as the wonderfully good-humoured and resilient Maureen, Penny's best friend, concerned at her daughter's relationship with a violent boyfriend. Once accused of caricaturing his "lower class" characters, here Leigh (with the collaborative assistance of his actors) exhibits them in all their authentic complexity, neither idealising nor sentimentalising them. On the DVD: All or Nothing's extras include the original trailer, as well as interviews with several members of the cast. Timothy Spall is interesting on the unnerving process of collaboration favoured by Leigh, whereby characters are "built from zero" by the actors. The smart and rather posh Lesley Manville strikes quite a contrast in real life with her mousey, put-upon character. There's also a meticulous and absorbing commentary from Mike Leigh, who talks about filming in Greenwich and how he has moved away from some of the more dogmatic ideas about filmmaking of his earlier, avant-garde days. --David Stubbs
A woman called Meg Harris finds herself cast into the spotlight when she is the victim of a female rape. Meg is threatened by her husband when she decides to go to court. Meanwhile the accused two regulars from a local bar are protected when the bar owner Jack chooses to lie under oath. This taut thriller was nominated for best feature at the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
Part love story, part comedy, part study of madness, Some Voices is above all a beautifully observed, elegantly written and brilliantly acted low-key British film. The story of Ray (Daniel Craig) and his relationships with his brother Pete (Dave Morrissey) and new girlfriend Laura (Kelly Macdonald) after his release from psychiatric hospital, it is the interaction between the three that forms the cornerstone of the movie. Craig dominates proceedings as his character finds himself needlessly torn between the two, capturing Ray's descent into madness far better than the rather unnecessary over use of visual effects. The interplay between all three is superb, particularly Craig and Macdonald who spend the first two-thirds of the story developing a dependence that is pure sweetness and light before darkness descends. Director Simon Cellan Jones (whose previous credits include Our Friends in the North) allows his first feature film to develop at it's own pace, letting the script and performances dictate the action. The West London setting fizzes with a life that Notting Hill barely hinted at, proving that a movie set in the capital (or indeed made in Britain) doesn't have to rely on mock cockney gangster stereotypes to reflect the city. This is a self-assured, engaging and ultimately moving piece of filmmaking. On the DVD: The accompanying documentary and interviews offer little insight into the process and are edited down to minute-long segments with little attempt to examine the bigger picture. Jones' commentary, however, does provide an interesting insight into the perils of making a film on a small budget. --Phil Udell
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