Ben Nicholson

★★★★☆ “We were told that the battle for hearts and minds was being won, as soldiers dug wells or drank tea with tribal elders – but I knew I was missing the story.” These are the words of warzone correspondent Jeremy Scahill to describe the niggle that prompted him to take a dangerous trip into…

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★★★★☆ Martin Scorsese has always been a dedicated cinephile as well as a lauded filmmaker. Even his 3D fantasy Hugo (2011) extolled the virtues of film preservation. Looking to champion forgotten gems from around the globe, he has now found a natural home overseeing the work of the World Cinema Foundation (WCF). They are a…

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★★☆☆☆ It’s been some time since Robert De Niro starred in a film that could be considered a bona fide success. There have been recent entries into his filmography that rightly have their champions (his turn in Silver Linings Playbook, for instance), but even pleasing supporting roles have been largely drowned amidst a tide of…

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★★★★☆ Indie darling Andrew Bujalski is widely considered to be the ‘godfather of mumblecore’, a movement that proffers amateur actors and slender plots designed primarily to examine personal relationships. His films to date, beginning with 2002’s Funny Ha Ha, have been widely lauded for developing that sub-genre to explore themes grander than its minimalism might…

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★★★☆☆ Austrian actor Anton Walbrook is perhaps best-known for his turn as ballet master Boris Lermontov in Powell and Pressburger’s sumptuous The Red Shoes (1948). In that film, jealousy saw him prey on the fears and desires of Mora Shearer and eight years earlier he was causing similar mental anguish through manipulation in Gaslight (1940).…

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★★★☆☆ As well as being the man behind universally acclaimed masterpieces Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), famed Austrian-born director Fritz Lang is also renowned for a career-long infatuation with a criminal mastermind. His first foray into the underworld of this twisted manipulator was a four-and-a-half hour epic from the silent era, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler…

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★★★★☆ This week sees Destin Daniel Cretton adapt his own award-winning short to craft his sophomore feature film, Short Term 12 (2013). A sun-kissed dramedy starring indie darling Brie Larson, Cretton’s effort won multiple prizes at SXSW for its tale about the inhabitants and staff at a foster home for ‘at-risk’ teens. It’s the type…

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★★☆☆☆ French writer Denis Diderot played an elaborate prank on the Marquis de Croismare, penning lengthy pleading letters from Suzanne – a fictional nun – which he forged into a single narrative after the jape was revealed. Guillaume Nicloux’s new adaptation of the controversial novel, The Nun (2013), sees the Marquis incorporated into the wider…

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★★★★☆ Observational documentary must, it seems, walk a perpetual tightrope; with its sights set on an elusive realism, there is always the danger of subjects that are unable to provide the desired naturalism when in front of a cameraman and crew. In the case of Zachary Heinzerling’s fantastic new film, Cutie and the Boxer (2013),…

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★★★★☆ Belgian director Joachim Lafosse seems to lay all of his cards on the table in the opening moments of his fifth feature, Our Children (2012). The action commences with a plaintive Murielle (an award-winning Émilie Dequenne) asking from a hospital bed for her children to be buried in Morocco, before four tiny coffins are…

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