Reviews by Anton Bitel

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Basket Case 2 (1990)

  Review preview for Basket Case 2

  For all the creature effects and gore on offer here - not to mention bad acting and risible dialogue - Basket Case 2 feels cosily tame.

  A man and his basket-case mutant brother hole up in suburbia.
• 
  Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992)

  Review preview for Basket Case 3: The Progeny

  Besides fraternity, paternity and family, craziness forms a major theme here.

  Duane's mutant brother is about to become a dad.
• 
  Basket Case - The Trilogy (2012)

  Review preview for Basket Case - The Trilogy

  Strange to think that a film made 30 years ago has never looked so good.

  Trilogy of films about a man and his basket-bound mutant brother
• 
  Battle In Heaven (2005)

  An ugly taxi driver and the prostitute daughter of a general go at it and at it and (yawn).
• 
  Battle Of Wits (2006)

  Review preview for Battle Of Wits

  Jacon Cheung's A Battle Of Wits is concerned far less with the clanging of arms than with the clash of ideologies.

  The art of surviving a siege in ancient China.
• 
  Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009)

  Review preview for Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans

  No film by Herzog has ever been so defiantly mainstream – and yet at the same time this remains one of the director's craziest, most outlandish affairs.

  Re-imagining of Abel Ferrara's film, starring Nic Cage as a cop in post-Katrina New Orleans, whose moral compass slips after he is put in charge of a murder investigation.
• 
  Basket Case (1982)

  Review preview for Basket Case

  The sort of film that any aspiring director of schlocky shock should be proud of having as their debut.

  Cult horror à la basket.
• 
  Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)

  Review preview for Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice

  Like a mutant monster, barreling out of control and straining to contain its own shifting form.

  The Caped Crusader takes on Superman, leading Lex Luthor to capitalise on the situation.
• 
  Bernie (2011)

  Review preview for Bernie

  Like the man after whom it is named, is joyously camp and colourful, and not a little eccentric – even unhinged.

  Based on a true story. Jack Black stars in Richard Linklater's playful treatment of the strange story of a Texan funeral director.
• 
  Birdemic: Shock And Terror (2010)

  Review preview for Birdemic: Shock And Terror

  So dull, incompetent and ridiculous that it can and will be championed only by a repeat audience of ironists and iconoclasts looking for the next cult film to worship.

  Ornithological apocalypse.
• 
  The Black Forest (2019)

  Review preview for The Black Forest

  Realism is certainly the mode that Platt embraces here, crafting her film as though it were an intimate holiday video, and inviting viewers to be flies on the wall.

  Drama about a pair of dysfunctional families on a summer break.
• 
  Black Water (2007)

  Review preview for Black Water

  In a watertight script, no option available to the characters is left unconsidered, and each has its deadly downside, leaving viewers to wonder what they themselves would have done.

  Three young adventurers find themselves stranded in a mangrove swamp with a killer crocodile waiting in the water.
• 
  Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan (2006)

  Review preview for Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan

  The unconscious is never suppressed and the id runs riot

  A fake documentary about a Kazakhstani TV reporter on a cultural mission to America.
• 
  Breakfast On Pluto (2005)

  Review preview for Breakfast On Pluto

  The quirkily personal and explosively political always seem to be dancing under the same mirrorball.

  An Irish transvestite, searching for the mother who abandoned him, is caught up in terrorist violence and hilarious goings on in London.
• 
  Brotherhood (2010)

  Review preview for Brotherhood

  Canon never pauses for breath or allows even a moment for reflection, editing his scenes with a rapid-fire staccato.

  A frat house hazing goes badly awry.
• 
  The Brothers Grimm (2005)

  Review preview for The Brothers Grimm

  The true fault lies with the script, which brings no life to the real, or indeed fantasy, characters.

  Bogus ghostbusters finally meet their match in a genuine enchanted forest.
• 
  Burning Bright (2010)

  Review preview for Burning Bright

  The tiger here is no CG or animatronic confection, but a living, breathing predator (or, more exactly, three of them playing one), brought into proximity with the actors through seamless compositing.

  Tiger terror.
• 
  Burn After Reading (2008)

  Review preview for Burn After Reading

  It is not as though we have not seen this sort of comic crime-gone-wrong chaos from the Coens before, but there is no-one who does it better.

  When a disc believed to contain sensitive information falls into the wrong hands, the intelligence services rush headlong into a comedy of errors.
• 
  Beautiful Boxer (2003)

  Review preview for Beautiful Boxer

  Beautiful Boxer documents Nong Toom's odyssey towards womanhood with considerable colour.

  True story about transgender kick boxer Nong Toom.
• 
  Benny's Video (1992)

  Review preview for Benny's Video

  Unsettles us by exposing our own voyeuristic tendencies and sadomasochistic urges.

  A boy obssessed with violent films begins to lose his grip on reality.
• 
  Ben X (2007)

  Review preview for Ben X

  As vital as it is virtual.

  A bullied teen takes refuge in a world of online gaming.
• 
  Beowulf (2007)

  Review preview for Beowulf

  A myth is here being deconstructed only to be reinforced and updated.

  An imaginative retelling of the Old English story about a hero who saves a kingdom from a monster and its mother.
• 
  Be Kind Rewind (2008)

  Review preview for Be Kind Rewind

  Oddball, endearing, and very, very funny.

  After accidentally wiping all the tapes in the video store where they work, two enterprising clerks decide to re-shoot the films themselves.
• 
  Blackwood (2013)

  Review preview for Blackwood

  This film really does do something genuinely new with its old, grinding tropes - but once the veil has been lifted, the mask removed and the mechanics beneath all these devices exposed, no mystery remains.

  A college professor finds himself plagued by spectral visions.
• 
  Black Rock (2012)

  Review preview for Black Rock

  It is violent and visceral, of course, but also a metaphor for the irreversibility of time.

  Three women camping on a remote island find themselves under threat from three crazed soldiers.
• 
  The Béla Tarr Collection (2009)

  Review preview for The Béla Tarr Collection

  Béla Tarr remains an individualist operating outside of any studio system, with a singular and consistent vision.

  Trio of works by the Hungarian auteur.
• 
  Blood (1989)

  Review preview for Blood

  For all the film's particularities of time and place, everything here feels essential and archetypal, as painful rites of passage are played out in the forms of mystery.

  After their father dies, two brothers find themselves facing up to his troubled legacy.
• 
  Blood (2012)

  Review preview for Blood

  For the most part, this is an intense study of family loyalties and legacies.

  A police detective's disgust at the murder of a young girl leads him to make dangerous decisions.
• 
  A Bloody Aria (2006)

  Review preview for A Bloody Aria

  The best kind of unpleasant.

  A music professor and a young student, on an illicit country drive, encounter a group of murderous young yokels.
• 
  Born To Fight (2004)

  A group of athletes try to save a village from a ruthless militia.
• 
  The Box (2009)

  Review preview for The Box

  Kelly should be praised to the heavens for his willingness to juggle very big ideas and to engage with the thorniest of ethical questions, taking one couple's seemingly straightforward dilemma and transforming it into a crux of apocalyptic dimensions.

  A skint couple are given them a box that will give them a million dollars if they open it... but it comes with a catch.
• 
  The Boys Are Back (2009)

  Review preview for The Boys Are Back

  An affecting blend of warm comedy and high pathos, The Boys Are Back brings an unusual all-male perspective to its otherwise familiar themes of domesticity, death and dysfunction.

  A wisecracking sportswriter is forced into single parenthood by the tragic death of his wife.
• 
  Brick (2005)

  Review preview for Brick

  While all the tropes of the teen movie are present and correct, they are also inflected with the unmistakable stylings of Dashiell Hammett

  A teenager investigates the underworld of a local high school.
• 
  Bright Future (2003)

  Review preview for Bright Future

  No less enigmatic, broad-reaching and majestically paced than a jellyfish.

  Exploration of disaffected youth in Japan.
• 
  Broken Flowers (2005)

  Journey of self-discovery for dead-pan, retired Lothario.
• 
  Bunny Chow (2006)

  Review preview for Bunny Chow

  What might sound vibrant or at least quirky on paper ends up falling very flat on screen.

  A group of Johannesburg stand-up comedians take a roadtrip to perform at a rock concert.
• 
  Buttercup Bill (2014)

  Review preview for Buttercup Bill

  Beautifully shot, subtly performed, and full of grown-up observations on precocious, perilous play.

  A story of twisted romance and dark secrets between childhood friends.
• 
  B For Boy (2013)

  Review preview for B For Boy

  To begrudge this film its faults would be to ignore the way it cuts to the very heart of the contradictions and hypocrisies of a nation that still regards women as vessels for male bloodlines.

  A woman resorts to desperate measures after she has a stillbirth.
• 
  Carlos The Jackal (2010)

  Review preview for Carlos The Jackal

  This is bravura filmmaking.

  A biopic of the mercenary soldier and assassin Carlos the Jackal, his shifting interests in politics and money and his bid to go down in history as a hero.
• 
  Carver (2008)

  Review preview for Carver

  This is an exploitation movie that exploits exploitation movies.

  Co-eds try not to lose their heads in the backwoods.
• 
  The Casebook Of Eddie Brewer (2012)

  Review preview for The Casebook Of Eddie Brewer

  However much he was required to pinch his own pennies, Spencer has elaborated a story so richly overdetermined that viewers cannot help but become disoriented by all the questions raised and unanswered.

  A paranormal investigator goes about his business as a documentary crew follows him.
• 
  Carnival Of Souls (1962)

  Review preview for Carnival Of Souls

  Harvey leaves enough questions unanswered in this twilight zone to ensure that Carnival Of Souls enjoys a haunting afterlife in the viewer's mind.

  A young girl's life begins to unravel after a car accident.
• 
  Cat Sticks (2019)

  Review preview for Cat Sticks

  For all its lowlife wallowing in metaphorical (and in the end literal) shit, Cat Sticks is beautiful.

  The stories of a group of addicts weave together on a rainy night in Kolcata.
• 
  The Children (2008)

  Review preview for The Children

  A creepy genre treat that is damn-near perfect in its execution.

  A seasonal house party turns sour after the children are hit by a virus that leads to violence.
• 
  Children Of Men (2006)

  Review preview for Children Of Men

  There is little that can be faulted in Cuarón's film.

  Conspiracy surrounds the birth of a child in an infertile post-apocalyptic world.
• 
  Come And See (1985)

  Review preview for Come And See

  Come And See is an intimate epic, in which all the promise of adolescence is perverted by war.

  A young teenager witnesses the genocide by Nazis during the German occupation of Belorussia.
• 
  The Constant Gardener (2005)

  A diplomat uncovers a web of deceit as he investigates the death of his wife.
• 
  Celeste And Jesse Forever (2012)

  Review preview for Celeste And Jesse Forever

  The writing is so sharp and rapid-fire, and the performances so charmingly self-lacerating, that you will be happy to spend time in these characters' company.

  Two best friends struggle to come to terms with sharing the perfect divorce.
• 
  The Celestine Prophecy (2006)

  Review preview for The Celestine Prophecy

  It may be full of wonders, but The Celestine Prophecy is untouched by the miracle of good humour.

  A former schoolteacher finds himself caught up in the hunt for sacred scrolls in Peru.
• 
  Chaotic Ana (2007)

  Review preview for Chaotic Ana

  A glossy, superficial affair, leading up to a climactic sequence too laughable to impress in any way.

  An artist who joins a commune tries to uncover her past lives to end a cycle of violence.