October 1, 2000 British comedy explores issues of salvation

THE GRACE who gets saved in this offbeat English comedy is a widow (Brenda Blethyn) who lives on the coast of Cornwall. The film begins in a churchyard at the funeral of her husband, who died jumping out of a plane without a...

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September 1, 2000 Chickens are inspiring

IT'S CALLED claymation or model animation: a technique of working with clay or plasticine models and filming them frame by frame, creating an illusion of movement. David Sproxtan, Nick Park and Peter Lord of Aardman Studios have...

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June 1, 2000 Faith given a fresh look but movie goes nowhere

HAVE you seen the one about the priest and the rabbi? It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and in a way, it is. Keeping the Faith, directed by and starring Edward Norton with Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman, is a...

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March 1, 2000 Canadians play key role in parable of human spirit

IT BEGINS as a movie about boxing and ends up as a parable of the human spirit. Based on the real life story of boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, Norman Jewison's The Hurricane packs a lot of story telling into its almost two and a...

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February 1, 2000 Cider House Rules translates well onto screen

"Good night, princes of Maine and kings of New England" says Dr. Larch (Michael Caine), to the boys of St. Cloud orphanage after he reads their bedtime story. The Cider House Rules, adapted by John Irving from his novel of...

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December 1, 1999 Funny, disturbing fable has offbeat premise

SOMETIMES there's a film with a premise so weird that I just have to go see it. Being John Malkovich, a first time effort from director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman, is one of those films. Here's the...

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November 1, 1999 American Beauty explores darker side of affluence

IF YOU'RE EASILY offended, find frank discussions and depictions of sexuality hard to deal with, or watch only family oriented movies, then American Beauty is not a film for you. But if you're interested in an exploration of the...

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October 1, 1999 Sixth Sense a really good ghost story with a Christian message about love

WE BELIEVE ... in all things visible and invisible." It has been a long time since there's been a really good ghost story at the movies. The cinema is a place where a good tale of the supernatural can be spun and waiting for the...

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September 1, 1999 Iron Giant one of summer's best films

IN 1968 TED Hughes, England's poet laureate (until his death in 1998), wrote a story called The Iron Man for his children to console them after the suicide of their mother, the poet Sylvia Plath. An unusual and affecting story,...

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June 1, 1999 The Matrix reflects violence, doesn't promote it

ON THE AFTERMATH of the high school tragedies in Littleton, Colo. and Taber Alta., media commentators have been searching for reasons why young people turn to acts of violence. Everything from bad parenting to violent video...

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