Tag Archives: Ben Wheatley

Scala!!! review — An ode to world’s wildest independent cinema

November 24, 2024 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, based on the book by Giles, Scala Cinema 1978-1993 | 96 min | ▲▲▲▲△ | On Blu-Ray (from Severin Films) The full title of this terrific documentary is Scala!!! or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up… Read More

In The Earth review — Amputation, rituals, and other weirdness

April 19, 2021 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Ben Wheatley | 100 min | Crave Ben Wheatley loves a good push-in. That's when the camera moves in on, usually, an inanimate object or, uh, shrubbery, paired with a drone- or trance-like score. It's a horror-movie cliche, but he doesn't mind. I should probably go on the record as not… Read More

Rebecca (1940/2020) review — Traditional melodrama worth seeing in two versions

November 3, 2020 flawintheiris

Rebecca | Directed by Alfred Hitchcock | Written by Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, and Philip MacDonald, from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier | 130 min The Hitchcock original remained unseen by me until recently — all I knew was it was his first Hollywood picture, and it won Best Picture over films like… Read More

Free Fire review — Guns in a Warehouse. The End.

April 19, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Ben Wheatley | Written by Wheatley and Amy Jump | 90 min Free Fire may be set in the 1970s, but it feels entirely like one of the forgotten post-Tarantino gangster pictures of the late '90s, back when everyone loved Reservoir Dogs and every studio was willing to sink money into low-budget, wordy gangster… Read More

High-Rise review — Pitch black class comedy

May 26, 2016 flawintheiris

Directed by Ben Wheatley | Written by Amy Jump, based on the novel by JG Ballard | 119 min |▲▲▲△△ Dogs have a rough time of it in High-Rise—injured, drowned, and eaten. Though, by the film's end, you might start to think they were the lucky ones. This is a pitch black comedy, a class… Read More