Ben Nicholson
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Tallinn 2017: Our festival highlights
Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival returned to the Estonian capital for its 21st instalment from 17 November – 3 December. Unlike some other A-list European festivals, the chilly darkness provides the perfect excuse to settle in and enjoy a wealth of international cinema.
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Made in Prague: Our festival highlights
The Made in Prague Film Festival (10-19 November) is back in London over the next two weekends. Programmed by the Czech Cultural Centre, new films will be accompanied by the first ever UK retrospective of seminal Czech New Wave filmmaker Jan Němec. Němec was an exciting name in an exciting scene in the 1960s, graduating…
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Film Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer
★★★★☆ Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos follows up 2015’s The Lobster with his second English-language feature. Starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is another dark comedy about the awful things we do to ourselves and others.Lanthimos’ career has been built on placing people in unusual scenarios – from the strange…
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Film Review: Deliver Us (Liberami)
★★★☆☆ In select UK cinemas this week, Italian director Federica Di Giacomo eschews genre sensationalism for her Palermo-set exorcism documentary Deliver Us (Liberami), which is far more interested in its human subjects than it is in the demonic.Of course, the very notion of a religious procedure to rid people of evil spirits may seem like genre…
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Film Review: The Ornithologist
★★★★☆ Beginning as a routine meander into the woods in search of birds, The Ornithologist becomes an unsettling and subversive pilgrimage taking in the Camino de Santiago, a variety of bizarre individuals and a mystifying destination of self-discovery and rebirth.Combining the death of St. Anthony of Padua with the structure of Homer’s The Odyssey, it’s…
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DVD Review: Whitney ‘Can I Be Me’
★★★☆☆ There’s little riper for a heartstring-plucking documentary than the life of a beloved star cut tragically short. In British filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s Whitney ‘Can I Be Me’, he paints a poignant picture but struggles to get to the heart of his subject.This is ironic, as the title of the film is a reference to…
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DVD Review: The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
★★★★☆ Czech master filmmaker Karel Zeman draws liberally from literary and cinematic history to create his sumptuous and whimsical fantasy adventure The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, made with his signature flair. The film is now available once again thanks to Second Run DVD.The Fabulous Baron Munchausen begins with a virtuoso sequence in which the evolution of…
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Film Review: The Death of Louis XIV
★★☆☆☆ In Ian Dunlop’s biography of Louis XIV he describes the Sun King’s death, saying that he “yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out.” Slow cinema maestro Albert Serra clearly didn’t take to that notion when he decided to make The Death of Louis XIV.Louis is appropriately played by a…
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KVIFF 2017: Our festival highlights
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival returned for its 52nd year from 30 June-8 July. The beautiful spa town on the edge of the Slavkov forest in Western Bohemia played host to A-list stars and directors from around the world. As ever, showcased were some titles from this year’s Cannes Film Festival as well as…
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KVIFF 2017: City of the Sun review
★★★★☆ Georgian director Rati Oneli’s City of the Sun is in a constant dialogue with philosophical treatise and epic poetry, but the humanity shines through in his meditative exploration of a half-abandoned mining town. The title of City of the Sun is taken from a 1602 utopian text of the same name by Dominican philosopher…