Ben Nicholson
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LFF 2013: ‘The Witches’ review
★★★☆☆ Cyril Frankel’s The Witches (1966) has long been one of the overlooked works in Hammer’s horror stable. Though attention may be drawn by the presence of writer Nigel Kneale in adapting Norah Lofts’ novel The Devil’s Own for the big screen, the lack of the studio’s regular star talent (Cushing, Lee et al.) made…
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LFF 2013: ‘Stranger by the Lake’ review
★★★★☆ A hidden beach at the lapping edges of a glorious lake provides the sole setting for Alain Guiraudie’s exceptional, erotically-charged French thriller Stranger by the Lake (2013) (released through Peccadillo Pictures next year). Having scooped a couple of awards earlier in the year at Cannes, it now arrives as the gala screening in the…
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Film Review: ‘Prince Avalanche
★★★☆☆ After a run of low-brow comedies that fans may have found a little disappointing, David Gordon Green – the writer and director of George Washington (2000) – seems to have made a return to more thoughtful filmmaking. His new film, Prince Avalanche (2013), may have the same potential trappings as his recent, more trivial…
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Film Review: ‘Love, Marilyn’
★★★☆☆ Liz Garbus’ latest documentary, Love, Marilyn (2012), opens with a bold gambit; reminding us that its subject has previously been the focus of hundreds of books. This move creates an immediate air of expectation that will lead viewers to anticipate something startlingly new from what is to follow. The trump card that Garbus has…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘The Mummy’
★★★☆☆ “He who robs the graves of Egypt…dies.” It’s sage advice oft proffered to enthusiastic archaeologists and rarely taken heed of. Unsurprisingly, it proves as valuable as the wise words from a stranger that discourage visiting that ominous Transylvanian castle, or investigating the abandoned cabin in the woods. It’s the laughing-off of such a recommendation…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas’ review
★★★★☆ Hellenic cinema has, for the past few years, been dominated by the Greek Weird Wave. It’s a movement that has sought to encapsulate a confused and disorientated country, and which arguably peaked early with Yorgos Lanthimos’ familial oddity Dogtooth (2009). Elina Psykou’s The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (2013) manages to just about adhere…
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LFF 2013: ‘Of Good Report’ review
★★★★☆ Rasping breath accompanies a pristine, monochrome shot from the point-of-view of a man stumbling across an area of scrubland. Two workmen stop to stare as he is revealed like some sub-Saharan gunslinger, pistol protruding from the top of his trousers, face and shirt awash with blood. A stark close-up follows his hand as he…
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LFF 2013: ‘Closed Curtain’ review
★★☆☆☆ In 2010, filmmaker Jafar Panahi was prosecuted by the Iranian government. Accused of colluding to undermine national security and producing propaganda against the Islamic Republic, he was sentenced to imprisonment and a twenty-year filmmaking ban. Since then, whilst awaiting the result of an appeal, the director has produced two feature films. The first was…
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LFF 2013: ‘B for Boy’ review
★★★☆☆ Umut Dağ’s Kuma (2013) brought the unconventional marital arrangement of second wives into UK cinemas earlier this year to impressive effect, and the practice appears again in Chika Anadu’s B for Boy (2013). A markedly differing scenario to Kuma, this potential successor is in place to take over spousal duties should the current wife…
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LFF 2013: ‘Electro Chaabi’ review
★★☆☆☆ Egypt’s tumultuous recent sociopolitical past and the current state of the nation has provided a fertile environment for the country’s filmmakers of late. Focus has ranged from the oppression of the everyday, as seen in Hala Lofty’s Coming Forth By Day (2012), to the explicitly political in dramas like Winter of Discontent (2013). Those…