Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ There’s a precipice that lies just out of frame throughout James Napier Robertson’s absorbing drama, The Dark Horse (2014). It represents different things to different characters, but they are all skirting its edge precariously, lending an air of danger to what is ostensibly a conventional underdog/mentorship story. Inspired by the real life of speed-chess…

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★★★☆☆ The central victory of Ron Mann’s fond portrait of the maverick American filmmaker Robert Altman is how personal he manages to make it. For a documentary about a director with such a strong authorial voice, it seems only fitting that Altman (2014) is largely narrated by the man himself through various interviews and recordings.…

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★★★★☆ Upon its initial release in 1932, Raymond Bernard’s early-sound war film, Wooden Crosses was hailed as one of the masterpieces of cinema. Since then, it has largely been overlooked in wider discussion of the genre which is a shame, and hopefully something that a new blu-ray release as part of Eureka’s continually interesting Masters…

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★★☆☆☆ In 2011, first-time director William Eubank constructed a replica of the International Space Station in a driveway, out of odds-and-ends, and within it staged a flawed but ambitious science fiction saga called Love. For his next trick, he has crafted another low-budget sci-fi yarn that is just as visually admirable, but even more problematic…

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★★★★☆ After her staggering visual and philosophical odyssey, The Fruit of Paradise (1970), Vera Chytilová found herself serving a lengthy ban from filmmaking in Czechoslovakia. Shackled by the clamp-downs of the Soviet regime, when she did finally return to feature filmmaking after seven years in the cold, she was forced to reject much of the…

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★★☆☆☆ Nicolas Philibert is best known for his endearing and award-winning documentary about a rural community school, Etre et Avoir (2002). His latest, Maison de la Radio (2013), shares a certain sense of parochial charm with that earlier film, even if it is certainly a far more minor work. Being the fly on a wall…

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★★★★☆ Ryan Reynolds is something of a revelation in Marjane Satrapi’s twisted black comedy The Voices (2014). In his defence, he’s often to be found doing solid work in shaky environs, but this is a performance of exceptional nuance in a role that undeniably warrants his A-game. In her graphic novel Persepolis there’s an exchange…

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★★★☆☆ There was much discussion over the past year about the winding down of beloved Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli with its two founding fathers, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, hanging up their pencils. Both found fitting if unspectacular ways to bow out; first Miyazaki with the soaring The Wind Rises (2013) and now Takahata…

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★★☆☆☆ The inertia of millennial existential malaise has been de rigueur in the horror genre of late. David Robert Mitchell terrified with a wonderful twist on teenage anxieties in his It Follows (2014), exploring the dualities of sex and the slow dread of infernal lazy afternoons. Elsewhere Starry Eyes (2014), written and directed by Kevin…

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★★☆☆☆ Danish director Susanne Bier has made a career of heightened but poignant drama that depicts broken relationships, familial tensions and personal catastrophes. One of her last films, Love Is All You Need (2013), was just that. They tend to be the kinds of films that are heartrending and raw if you have bought into…

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