Ben Nicholson

★★★★★ The extremities of the human psyche have for decades fascinated Bavarian auteur Werner Herzog; from the gleeful revolt of Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) right through to the drug-fuelled excesses of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009). More than one of the crowning achievements of his fiction filmography centres on the…

Continue

★★★★☆ “It’s [in] the mountains where the pure, raw talent comes out,” states ex-cyclist Greg LeMond as he discusses the monumental inclines that punctuate the world’s most famous bike race, the Tour de France. They were where the hugely popular rider Marco Pantani – known affectionately as ‘Il Pirata’ after his bandana and earring combo…

Continue

★★★★★ Familial ties and their effect on our lives were always a chief concern of Japanese master Yasujirô Ozu, specialising as he did in shomin-geki: realist films about ordinary people. His final film, An Autumn Afternoon (1962), is a fittingly contemplation of the passage of time; the dangers of holding tightly to the past collide…

Continue

★★★★★ It’s not just examining the realities behind socialist icons that preoccupies Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s 1977 masterpiece Man of Marble, but also the dangers of censorship and the innate deceits of cinema. It took over a decade for the filmmaker to bring his story to the screen due to governmental reticence, and even when…

Continue

★★★☆☆ A charming slice of magical realism, Janez Burger’s Silent Sonata (2010) comes cartwheeling into UK cinemas this week having first screened at the 2011 Rotterdam Film Festival. The narrative concerns a grieving family caught in the middle of an unnamed Eastern European conflict, as well as their chance crossing of paths with the travelling…

Continue

★★★☆☆ It’s difficult not to think of Michael Haneke’s Hidden (2005) in the opening stages of Philippe Claudel’s third film, Before the Winter Chill (2013). The last time Daniel Auteuil played a middle-class husband receiving unwanted deliveries from an unknown sender, the stakes were high in the Austrian’s superlative thriller. Whilst those trappings are evident…

Continue

★★★☆☆ East-Asian cinema has long been a leading producer of meditative family dramas, from the quietly profound work of Ozu all the way through to the present day. With his acclaimed debut feature, Singaporean director Anthony Chen looks to follow in that tradition with his semi-autobiographical tale, Ilo Ilo (2013), released in UK cinemas this…

Continue

★★☆☆☆ “Without it, life means nothing” according to a quote that fills the screen in the opening moments of British director Shan Khan’s twisting London-set thriller, Honour (2014). Attempting to straddle the potentially conflicting identities of cultural expose and nerve-shredding cat-and-mouse chase, it revolves around the horrifying practice of so called ‘honour-killings’ in Muslim communities…

Continue