Ben Wheatley
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Parting Shot – Ben Wheatley
Since his 2009 debut Down Terrace, a pitch-black comedy about a Brighton crime family in decline, the fearless writer/director Ben Wheatley has gripped audiences with his brutally bleak take on British life. His follow-up, the hitman horror Kill List, entered even more terrifying territory, but Wheatley is now back to comedy with his third feature, Sightseers. After playing at Cannes, Toronto and Sundance, Sightseers hits U.S. screens this spring through IFC Films. It may be his lightest work yet, but Sightseers’ subject matter is still pretty grisly by normal standards: It’s a blood-soaked romcom about two vacationing 30-something lovers (co-writers […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 17, 2013 -
TRAILER WATCH: BEN WHEATLEY’S “SIGHTSEERS”
Over the past few years, Ben Wheatley has emerged as a distinctive and deliciously dark voice in British cinema, with his first two features, Down Terrace and Kill List, rightly getting excellent reviews. His third film, Sightseers, premiered at Cannes in May, where it was picked up for U.S. distribution by IFC Films, and I’m really looking forward to checking it out. I’m sadly not attending Toronto next month, where Sightseers will play, but look forward to hear the word on it from those attending. For now, this NSFW-ish trailer — via The Guardian‘s website — will have to sate my […]
by Nick Dawson on Aug 28, 2012 -
LOCARNO CRITICS NOTEBOOK #2
Philosophical musings on the nature of time, an unlikely friendship between a sexy Cali chick and an elderly woman, a bizarrely fast-forwarded comical look at a very sad life, and an indictment of systemic oppression in China: these are the subjects of the four films from Locarno’s main competition (“Concorso internazionale”) that I’ve caught over the past few days. First on the docket is Peter Mettler’s intriguing but disappointing—relative to his other work, at least—The End of Time, an epic non-narrative film about the multitude of perspectives that render an objective definition of linear time meaningless. At times expressive and […]
by Adam Cook on Aug 8, 2012 -
FEMALE FRIGHT DIRECTORS AND LIVE TWEETING HORROR AT SXSW
I like live tweeting panels if the panels hold up to the process, and yesterday’s “Directing the Dead 2,” here at SXSW, did. (The funny thing about live tweeting is that people entering mid-stream can become confused — as happened yesterday, I realized, as I tweeted Vikram Gandhi’s comments on religion at the Q&A for his Kumare. I’d write, “Ghandi” before his comments, and several people tweeted me Jesus quotes or passages from the Bible back.) The panelists were James Wan (Insidious), Simon Rumley (Little Deaths), Ben Wheatley (Kill List), Jacob Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun), Nicolas Goldbart (Phase Seven), […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2011 -
SXSW SNAPS, PART TWO
The Innkeepers‘ star Sara Paxton, glam at the Driskill Hotel premiere afterparty. In Ti West’s excellent horror picture, wearing a red hoodie and blue jeans she plays a tomboyish hotel clerk and amateur ghost hunter. A fantastic idea — as part of its Film Design Awards, SXSW hosts a poster design competition, displaying all the entries in lobby gallery. Myth of the American Sleepover producer Adele Romanski and Visit Films sales agent Ryan Kampe at the Kodak Filmmaker’s Brunch. Forget barbecue. Grilled cheese is the food of Austin. The sandwich here is from The Big Cheese, inside the convention hall. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2011 -
SXFANTASTIC’S TIM LEAGUE ON 2011’S MIDNIGHT EDITION
Despite their protestations to the contrary, festival programmers are often a competitive bunch, jostling for not only premieres but status. That’s why SXFantastic, now in its third year, is such a welcome event. A collaboration between SXSW and Fantastic Fest, which unspools its own main event in September, SXFantastic brings Fantastic’s genre smarts and midnight-movie acumen to the South By sprawl. The result is a focused section that has been producing its own fan favorites, critical hits and even industry acquisitions. Last year’s successes included Gareth Edwards’ Monsters and the unlikely pick-up A Serbian Film (which just landed the SITGES […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 9, 2011
