Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ There’s a recurring motif of leafless trees in Laurie Anderson’s lyrical Heart of a Dog. In the context of their first appearance, they’re like neural pathways forming connections between past and present just as the filmmaker is doing. Stark against a spectacular star-filled sky they seem to stretch up to the heavens. Later they bristle…

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★★★☆☆ From the very first pan of its opening titles, Tim Miller’s Deadpool brandishes its meta credentials with the title character’s cocky, abrasive relish. As the camera glides through a SUV suspended mid-somersault, the cast are introduced as stereotypes (‘hot chick’ or ‘British villain’) while a floating Starbucks cup bears the scrawled name Rob L.…

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★★★☆☆ Based on the novel by Michael Punke which is itself based on true events, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning The Revenant – out now on DVD and Blu-ray – is the tale of a frontiersman named Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his relentless quest for vengeance after his comrades left him for dead in the…

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★★★★☆ There is a twin dualism at the heart of Stuart Cooper’s Overlord that potentially explain why it has generally been overlooked since its release in 1975. First there is form: a combination of narrative drama and archival documentary footage. Then there’s style: a blend of the distinguished nobility of Second World War-era productions, and…

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★★★★☆ Cristi Puiu’s Un Certain Regard-winning sophomore feature The Death of Mr Lazarescu was the film that catapulted what has come to be known as the Romanian New Wave into the international spotlight in 2005. However, the movement – which has introduced the likes of Cristian Mungiu, Radu Muntean, Calin Peter Netzer, and Corneliu Porumboiu…

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★★★★★ Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin is not quite like other wuxia movies. It shares a reverie in the natural world with King Hu’s A Touch of Zen and the turmoil between love and duty of Ang Lee’s genre-rejuvenating Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it transcends both. Where Hu leant on religious allegory, Hou’s spirituality is…

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★★★★☆ When Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) first stepped into the ring, onto the screen, and into the hearts and minds of cinema audiences back in 1976’s Rocky, few would have predicted him making it to the seventh round. Even fewer would imagine that he’d still be holding his own (a couple of face-plants onto the…

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★★★☆☆  Even at the best of times it’s impossible to entirely untangle the work of Quentin Tarantino from the whirlwind of soundbites and personality that inevitably trail around with them. Things are hardly any different for his eighth film The Hateful Eight as it arrives in glorious 70mm Ultra Panavision in London’s West End with…

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