Ben X Reviews

This "issue" movie from Belgian director Nic Balthazar throws a dramatic feint so improbable one can almost see a cartoon question mark floating above the audience's heads.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

An acute sense of foreboding animates this ambitious Dutch drama; clearly, something's about to go very badly wrong.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Flawed, but a forceful debut from a promising director.

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It's a promising idea that hits the skids.

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The next it has cast all narrative sense to the winds as it grabs desperately at a triumphant (even feel-good) ending. So much good work, undone at a stroke.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Ben X is about nothing and nothing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

It has its moments of triteness but by and large Ben X is provocative, moving and effective. It's a refreshingly different film that cleverly uses aspects of game culture to tell and intriguing story and confront difficult social problems.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The film's moral, technological and psychological themes are glazed over, and the manner in which Ben finally conquers his personal demons is laughably overblown.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/6

Nic Balthazar's morality tale is a shrewd exercise in expectation-subversion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Ben X's brand of reality [is] as vital as it is virtual.

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What leads off like a docudrama of the social ills accompanying a misunderstood condition merges into fantasy until, in very clever ways, director Nic Balthazar turns the medium into the message.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

[Director Balthazar] has made a vivid little film about bullying and cyber-bullying, and done a remarkable job of opening up the head of a silent witness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

It's not the overarching naturalism of the performance that stands out but the conceptual breakdown of the portrayal into smaller, loosely connected segments.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

It would be hard to guess from the final result that Balthazar has never made a film before; Ben X takes full advantage of all that the medium has to offer.

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Enriquecido ainda por uma direção de arte que ilustra a tristeza do universo de Ben, este é um projeto artisticamente ambicioso que revela sua sensibilidade particularmente através de seus belos diálogos.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

[Director Nic] Balthazar's determination to draw a positive message from a negative situation doesn't quite fit.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5