Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ The libertine rationalism of pre-revolutionary France is fed to the lions in Albert Serra’s strange and transfixing Story of My Death (2013). A low-lit union of bloody thighs and throats, it plucks two infamous seducers from the annals of history and literature and uses them to metaphorically wander through a social dusk, taking one…

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★★☆☆☆ Lee Chatametikool’s debut feature, Concrete Clouds is something of a cautionary tale couched in a portrait of two brothers cast adrift during Thailand’s economic crisis in 1997. Made in 2013, with the society on the brink of another collapse, it is easy to read the allegorical warning in this elliptical narrative that appears to…

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★★★☆☆ The evocation of a western villain may be a happy coincidence, but with cyber-thriller Blackhat (2014) Michael Mann remains recognisably concerned with the masculine duels around the law’s fraying edges. Again, Mann focuses on characters racing along legal blurred lines; in this case, though, they are the kind that carry packets of shimmering data…

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★★★★☆ According to an octogenarian emcee as she lays down some beats on a neon-drenched intersection of sprawling graffiti-laden alleyways, Sion Sono’s Tokyo Tribe (2014) is “comin’ at ya from the ass-end of hell.” The Japanese gonzo director prefers his dials turned up to eleven and that’s most certainly the intention with this, a dystopian…

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★☆☆☆☆ Audiences could be forgiven for their slack jaws when venerated thesp Liam Neeson blazed onto screens as the hard-as-nails lead in EuropaCorp’s dark and deliciously brutal genre flick, Taken, back in 2008. Since then, the actor has gone on to define not only his own brand of throwback action antihero, but a personal cult…

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★★★★☆ Events over the course of the last six months – most notably those surrounding the riots in Ferguson, Missouri in August – have once again given rise to urgent discourse on race relations in the United States. As though fated, into that charged atmosphere comes Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014), a stirring and complex portrayal…

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★★★★☆ For more than thirty years, German filmmaker Edgar Reitz has devoted his career to chronicling his homeland through his ongoing Heimat series. He returns to the lineage of the Simon family with Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision (2013), an elegiac pastoral epic that profoundly values its sense of place whilst coveting the…

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★★★☆☆ Kevin Smith, so long associated with bringing bring relatable geeky slacker comedy to the big screen, made a concerted effort with his last film, 2011’s fanatical cult horror Red State, to break out of that cinematic mould. He goes even further with his latest joint, Tusk (2014), which goes straight to DVD in the…

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★★★★☆ The feature debut of playwright debbie tucker green, Second Coming (2014) opens with a shot of a murmuration of starlings. Their symbolic meaning – and particularly their endlessly beguiling flight – is often interpreted as purporting to familial relationships and improved communication. Both are vital elements of this terrific British drama that places God…

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★★★★☆ There have been several films over the past few years that have sought to engage with the subject of creativity and the pursuit of artistic success. Few have been quite so razor-sharp as Alex Ross Perry’s acerbic third feature, Listen Up Philip (2014), which skewers the misanthropic pretensions of a ‘notable’ young New York…

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