Thin on the ground

Ben X
15, Key cities

August is a hopeless month for movies — it’s when the big studios dump their worst films on us, pretty much — and so there is very little worth seeing, let alone reviewing. I did think about seeing the new Will Ferrell comedy, Step Brothers, but after catching the tail end of a trailer I thought: ‘Actually, I’d rather dash my head against a door jamb.’ And I did think about seeing the new Vin Diesel film, Babylon A.D., but then I caught the tail end of that trailer and thought, ‘Actually, I’d rather dash my head against a door jamb and then stuff my nostrils with a well known brand of soft cheese like, say, Boursin.’ It is probably unfair to judge a film on the tail end of its trailers, but it does save a lot of time plus the tenner it now costs to go to the cinema. It’s like judging a book by its cover, which is also probably unfair but I will add this: beware the paperback which has any kind of embossing on the front. It’s crap.

So, then, Ben X, which I had not seen a trailer for and knew nothing about, and so it had that going for it, at least. It turns out to be a Belgian film written and directed by a Nic Balthazar, a Flemish film critic and author who, in the press notes, writes: ‘It is sometimes said you do not find a story, the story finds you,’ which, as it happens, I know to be true. Indeed, I was once in Waitrose when a story found me, but being in something of a rush I’m afraid I said to it, ‘Be off.