Ben Nicholson
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Film Review: ‘Ping Pong’
★★★☆☆ “It’s not how hard you play, it’s where you put it”, flourishes 85-year-old Lisa Modlich with an acknowledgement towards the cameraman. Since her inaugural table tennis medal in 1992, the octogenarian Modlich has gone on to vanquish around 150 more opponents. Hugh Hartford’s Ping Pong (2012) tells the stories of Lisa and several other OAPs hailing from around the globe…
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DVD Review: ‘Cleanskin’
★☆☆☆☆ The problem with making a counter-terrorism film in a world that has already experienced Jack Bauer is that, in its eight seasons, 24 covered almost every single angle and plot twist that one could imagine for the sub-genre. So when Sean Bean’s grizzled and damaged ex-soldier is employed by a murky government agency to…
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DVD Review: ‘Confidence’
★★★☆☆ Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó is perhaps best-known for his Oscar-winning effort Mephisto (1981) and subsequent international productions including Sunshine (1999) and Being Julia (2004). Now arriving on DVD is one of his Hungarian films made prior to his international success; Confidence (Bizalom, 1980).The plot sees two strangers thrown together in Budapest during the Second…
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DVD Review: ‘J. Edgar’
★★★☆☆ At the centre of Clint Eastwood’s biopic of FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover is an underdeveloped examination of his quasi-homosexual relationship with his deputy Clyde Tolson. The filmmakers’ treatment of this particular story-strand perfectly represents what is good about J. Edgar (2011) and where it falls down; it has moments of interest but fails…