Ben Nicholson
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DVD Review: ‘The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck & God
★★★☆☆ Having been released in its home country of Japan all the way back in 2007, The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker has finally reached British shores thanks to its DVD release courtesy of Third Window Films. Directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura (best known in the UK for penning 2002…
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DVD Review: ‘360’
★★☆☆☆ Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles first came to the attention of the wider cinemagoing public with 2002’s City of God, a wildly successful tale of gangsters in the slums of Rio. His follow-up adaptation of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener (2005) was similarly well received but 2008’s Blindness was considered somewhat disappointing. Many a…
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DocHouse Presents: Solar Eclipse review
★★★☆☆ “It’s not our job to change them,” remarks Czech engineer Milan Smrž when discussing the inhabitants of a small Zambian township in Martin Maraček’s Solar Eclipse (Pod sluncem tma, 2011). This year’s DocHouse Thursdays strand will kick off with a screening of the film at London’s Rich Mix Cinema on 10 January, which will…
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DVD Review: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet’
★★★☆☆ Alain Resnais has forged a hugely successful career that has had, running through it, an exploration of memory and the past. Having lost none of the experimental edge of his formative years, the French auteur returns to these themes once again for his latest film, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Vous n’avez encore rien…
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DVD Review: ‘Partners in Crime’
★★☆☆☆ Arriving on DVD after a brief run in the capital at the end of last year, Partners in Crime (2012) is the third film in a succession of Agatha Christie adaptations from French director Pascal Thomas. The first in the series to receive a UK release, this is another audacious outing for Bélisaire and…
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DVD Review: ‘Jackpot’
★★☆☆☆ Over the last few years Norwegian author Jo Nesbø has shot to fame on the back of a series of successful crime novels – principally involving Oslo detective, Harry Hole. Last year saw the first two films based on his stories arrive in the UK; slick thriller Headhunters (Hodejegerne, 2011) was based on one…
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DVD Review: ‘The Jia Zhang-Ke Collection’
★★★★☆ Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke may already be well-known to cineliterate Western audiences for his 2006 film Still Life or, perhaps from his effort two years later, 24 City (2008). A pivotal part of the ‘Sixth Generation’ of Chinese filmmakers, Zhang-Ke’s confrontational films present a more gritty and realistic portrait of his home country than the…
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DVD Review: ‘The Czechoslovak New Wave’
★★★★☆ Many a film fan may have gone through life thus far without lavishing an abundance of attention on the cinema of Czechoslovakia – or even, for that matter, being aware of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw films of previously unseen quality coming from the country in the 1960s, including highly regarded work…
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DVD Review: ‘In Your Hands’
★★☆☆☆ Over the past decade or so, multilingual stage and screen star Kristin Scott Thomas has carved a palatable little niche for herself; appearing in intense French dramas such as 2008’s I’ve Loved You So Long. This has seen the actress, who has been a resident in Paris since her teens, acquiring the kind of…
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DVD Review: ‘Swandown’
★★★☆☆ British psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair was one of the more vocal opponents to the London 2012 Olympics because, to quote one of the contributors of Andrew Kötting’s Swandown (2012), “he [Sinclair] doesn’t think anything is allowed to happen in Hackney without his permission”. At least that is the opinion put forward by comedian Stewart Lee…
