Screenshots from last nights film, Victor Erice’s ‘The Spirit of the Beehive’, 1973. Erice only made a handful of films, all slow, visually rich and evocative, which is maybe why he gets compared with Terrence Malik a lot (the guy who made ‘Badlands’, ‘Days of Heaven’ etc). Maybe he should also be compared with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (but not too much). It was the best film of the year so far. In fact it made all of last years films seem not so good; mainly because it was so effortless and deft. It was also a bit luxuriant. That’s a relatively horrible word to use to describe a film, and i would normally avoid the luxuriant in favor of the uncooked and the inexperienced, but Erice’s luxury seemed sincere and very honest (something to do with the rich and velvety film stock). It had good faces too.