Film review: JOHN DOE: VIGILANTE, from Built For Speed

John Doe: Vigilante is bound to divide audiences and evoke volatile reactions for both its subject matter and its film-making style. Taking perhaps too many thematic and plot cues from 90’s serial killer films such as Natural Born Killers and Seven, the film follows an Aussie vigilante killer calling himself John Doe who murders assorted criminals who he thinks have

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Film review: FOR NO GOOD REASON, from Built For Speed

For No Good Reason documents the life and work of iconic British artist and cartoonist Ralph Steadman. Even if his name is not familiar, his confronting artwork which is full of wonderfully grotesque, cadaverous, deformed figures and distinctive ink and paint splatters will be.  His art has graced posters for movies such as Withnail and I and for years his

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Film review: BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, from Built For Speed

Psychological thriller Before I Go to Sleep will inevitably draw comparisons with Chris Nolan’s Memento. Like Memento this film features a character with anterograde amnesia whose lost memories hides a disturbing past.  Unfortunately, this film is not the wonderfully clever and fascinating puzzle that Memento proved to be. Nicole Kidman plays Christine Lucas a woman who wakes each morning to

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Film review: THE CASE AGAINST 8, from Built For Speed

The documentary The Case Against 8 takes us into the heated and complex battle to legalise same-sex marriage in the US. In 2004 the California Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage but in 2008 a state constitutional amendment known as Proposition 8 invalidated same sex marriages that had taken place in the previous four years and prevented other same sex couples

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Film review: SIDDHARTH, from Built For Speed

Siddharth is a visually remarkable but depressing Indian drama that examines issues of identity self-worth, masculinity and family breakdown in a country undergoing tumultuous change. The film centres on Delhi father and zip repairer or ‘chain walla’ Mahendra (Rajesh Tailang) who lives on the edge of poverty with his wife Suman (Tannishtha Chatterjee), his son Siddharth or siddhu as he

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Film review: GONE GIRL, from Built For Speed

David Fincher is one of the finest filmmakers of recent times and his movies are now major events.  Not surprisingly his adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling 2012 novel Gone Girl has been one of the year’s mostly hotly anticipated movies.  While this film is not an immediate masterpiece like Seven, Zodiac, Fight Club and The Social Network, it is still

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