Ben Nicholson
-
Korean Film Festival: ‘Haemoo’ review
★★★☆☆ Not content with dominating the rails with his recently lauded ferroquine sci-fi allegory Snowpiercer (2013), Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho has also sets his sights on the high-seas with nautical adventure Haemoo (2014). Co-written by Bong and director Shim Sung-bo, it showcases precisely why certain Korean directors are currently the toast of Hollywood, playfully lacing…
-
DVD Review: ‘Walesa: Man of Hope’
★★★★☆ One might presume that filmmakers would slow down and smooth off the edges in their dotage, regardless of the material or the formal experimentation of their youth. Fortunately, there are many that defy that expectation. The 84 year-old Jean-Luc Godard’s abrasive Goodbye to Language 3D (2014) is about as far from safe as one…
-
Film Review: ‘Interstellar’
★★★★☆ Following the mad matryoshka architecture of dreams in Inception (2010), and having finally vacated Gotham’s city limits for good, Christopher Nolan is now aiming his gaze firmly onto the most epic of imaginable canvases. The history of mankind’s achievement is built on voracious exploration, and Nolan now asks audiences to follow his scientifically-framed expedition…
-
DVD Review: ‘Sharknado 2: The Second One’
★★☆☆☆ Just when you thought it was safe to go back outdoors, the streets of America are once again swimming with toothy predators in The Asylum’s DTV creature-feature Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014). After the cult success of the original film, largely based on its ridiculous title and poster, this follow-up shifts the action…
-
Blu-ray Review: ‘Youth of the Beast’
★★★★☆ There’s a great deal to admire about Seijun Suzuki’s idiosyncratic, jazz-infused gangster thriller Youth of the Beast (1963). Released shortly after the return of the director’s hallucinatory Branded to Kill (1967) to UK screens, this sui generis Yakuza caper arrives courtesy of Eureka’s excellent Masters of Cinema Collection. Even in charge of what is…
-
DVD Review: ‘Mystery Road’
★★★☆☆ The wilds of Australia play home to Ivan Sen’s latest in both a physical and metaphorical sense. The oppression of indigenous peoples was a topic explored in his previous film, Toomelah (2009), and it glints as a rich vein of this new genre nugget, Mystery Road (2013). Determined to steer clear of anticipated escalations…
-
Blu-ray Review: ‘I Clowns’
★★★☆☆ “Clown acts have to be short and make people laugh in ten minutes – give it some rhythm!” These are the words of wisdom bestowed during the first interview Federico Fellini conducts in his made-for-television pseudo-documentary, I Clowns (1970). This advice is taken to heart throughout much of the film’s mischievous structure as (with…
-
DVD Review: ‘Godzilla’
★★★★☆ It was sixty years ago that a gigantic and terrifying lizard first lumbered out of the Pacific Ocean and proceeded to leave its indelible footprint on cinematic history. Since Ishiro Honda’s Gojira (1954), the scaly titan has been repurposed on the silver screen dozens of times – often having to battle critics as ferociously…
-
London 2014: ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’ review
★★★★☆ For much of the past decade, creatures of the night have had to stand by and watch as their charisma was leeched by toothless tween angst franchises. Fortunately, attempts are now being made to give succubi their credibility back. First came the droll literary ennui of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and…
-
London 2014: ‘The Keeping Room’ review
★★★★☆ Contorting the standard gender expectations of its genre, Daniel Barber’s The Keeping Room (2014) arrives at the BFI London Film Festival on the back of considerable praise. Investigations of masculine identity regularly pass the time of day in traditional Westerns, yet this revisionist incarnation turns its attention away from the horrors of the Civil…