Ben Nicholson
-
DVD Review: ‘Woman in Gold’
★★☆☆☆ There are always drawbacks to adapting and projecting real life events onto the big screen. In the case of British director’s Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold (2014), it’s not just that an odd-couple legal dramedy about art restitution can’t live up to the fantastic story that its telling. Indeed, that it far less of…
-
DVD Review: ‘War and Peace’
★★★★☆ Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace was released in 2002, and its presentation of escalating nationalist posturing – aka the arms race between India and Pakistan – was incredibly apposite. Over a decade later, WMDs in Iraq may not be the hot-button topic they were back then, but the Bharatiya Janata Party has returned to…
-
Film Review: ‘Eden’
★★★☆☆ French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve isn’t exactly known for emotional subjectivity and visual bombast, so when a young raver tripping out in a field sees an animated bird swooping through the sky in her latest film, Eden (2014), it potentially marks something of a departure. Subsequently, things settle into a more familiar aesthetic that follows…
-
Blu-ray Review: ‘Third Man’
★★★★★ No cinematic genre can capture the inky morality of pernicious scavengers feeding on the carcass of post-war Europe like film noir. And no other noir manages it with quite the pervasive world-weariness and melancholy of The Third Man (1949). Beautifully penned by Graham Greene for Carol Reed’s direction, it is one of cinema’s true masterpieces:…
-
DVD Review: ‘The Gunman’
★★☆☆☆ With The Gunman (2015), Sean Penn becomes the latest inductee into that club slowly being filled by older gentlemen with a particular set of skills. Pierre Morel was a key figure in the meteoric rise of the ‘geriaction’ genre with his explosive Taken (2008), not only launching Liam Neeson’s own brand of ass-kicking but…
-
Film Review: ‘The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson’
★★★☆☆ “If it’s gonna kill me, I don’t want it to bore me.” It’s an apparently novel way to approach a diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer, but is precisely the one adopted by Wilko Johnson. Most famous for being the wide-eyed berserker hopping around the stage for Dr. Feelgood in the 70s, his response to…
-
Film Review: ’13 Minutes’
★★★☆☆ The problem with Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes (2015) is ultimately the weight of history. Where the knowledge of what is to transpire elevates every scene of his monumental Oscar-winning portrayal of Hitler’s final days, Downfall (2004), in this tale of a failed assassination attempt it hamstrings the drama. Whenever a film opens with the…
-
Interview: Marjane Satrapi on black comedy ‘The Voices’
“Earl Grey is my favourite tea,” says Marjane Satrapi as she stuffs a handful of teabags into a large Thermos sat on the table before her. We’re sat in a London hotel room to chat about her new film, the Ryan Reynolds-starring black serial killer comedy The Voices (2014), but British audiences are likely to…
-
KVIFF 2015: Time Out of Mind review
★★★★☆ When Bob Dylan released his 30th studio album in 1997, critics claimed that the ominous atmosphere created by producer Daniel Lanois was palpable, but also almost drowned the singer’s vocals. It’s interesting then that New York-based director Oren Moverman chooses to use the same title for his film concerning a homeless man adrift and…
-
Film Review: ‘Comet’
★★☆☆☆ “A dream of memories; conversations that we’ve had…they weaved in and out of each other like those M.C. Escher drawings.” This is how insufferable protagonist Dell (Justin Long) describes a recent dream in Comet (2014) which, in keeping with the film’s ardent reflexivity, also describes the film itself. He’s speaking to his romantic foil,…