Top Five Christmas Movies
Scott Dawes of the Robert Connor Dawes Foundation talks to Craig Francis about his top 5 Christmas movies (each paired with a recommended beverage!) in the final outing for Friday on My Mind for 2023.
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Film review: ‘Bromley: Light After Dark’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
I had never heard of Australian artist David Bromley but apparently he’s hugely successful and according to the documentary, Bromley: Light After Dark, his work is ubiquitous in upper middle-class homes. This mostly uplifting documentary examines his work and the aspects of his life, like family, that he cherishes and that have sustained him in his battles with mental illness.
Read moreFilm review: ‘Saltburn’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Saltburn, is writer/director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her striking but erratic feature debut, Promising Young Woman. More stylistically assured than that film, Saltburn is an enjoyably strange, dark satire of class consciousness, poisonous wealth and social exclusion so full of indelible scenes that we can mostly overlook some slightly shaky storytelling. Barry Keoghan, who was unforgettable in the Banshees of
Read moreAlli Harding is back with South of the River tomorrow at 2pm
Brenda Lee is on top of the US charts with her song ‘Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree’ – a mere 65 years after it was first released. And the classic ‘Fairytale of New York’ is flying up the UK charts in tribute to The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan, who died last month. Alli will play those and a
Read moreFilm review: ‘The Hunger Games: The ballad of songbirds and snakes’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
The dystopian sci-fi film series, The Hunger Games was hugely successful and a cultural touchstone for many young cinema goers (but not so much this reviewer). Through those films, Jennifer Lawrence established herself as a major star playing heroine, Katniss Everdeen who, in a post-apocalyptic future, competed in the eponymous televised teen gladiator death matches and battled the fictional nation
Read moreFilm review: ‘NAPOLEON’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
Bringing to life a full-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte has been something of an Ahab-like quest for film directors. Stanley Kubrick had a Napoleon film (at one point with Jack Nicholson as the French Emperor) in the works for many years before shelving it due to studio budget concerns. Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk tackled the subject with mixed results in
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