Film review: THE BEST OFFER, from Built For Speed

Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore evokes Hitchcock with his latest film The Best Offer, a strange, fascinating and intricately crafted story of romantic obsession, high art and anxiety disorders. Geoffrey Rush stars as Virgil Oldman a wealthy and powerful British art dealer and auctioneer operating in Rome.  Elite in his field and an elitist in general, Virgil’s pompous, irascible and

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Film review: STOKER, from Built For Speed

Stoker is a bizarre, hypnotic American gothic thriller which, as might be expected given its title’s reference to Dracula author Bram Stoker, revels in an atmosphere of menace. The prolific Mia Wasikowska stars as the sullen and taciturn teenager India Stoker who lives a Carrie-like existence with her comically flaky mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) in a large dilapidated southern mansion.

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Film review: THE ROCKET, from Built For Speed

The Rocket, an Australian production set in Laos is a charming, poignant sometimes weird humanist drama about family breakdown, western corporate greed, the enduring impact of the Vietnam War on Laos and the interpersonal bonds that carry people through awful times. The film is told largely from the perspective of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe) a young Laotian boy burdened with the

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Film review: THE EARTH WINS, from Built For Speed

IMAX documentary, The Earth Wins is a less ambitious cousin to films like Koyaanisqatsi and Samsara. Like those films it’s composed of stunning images and music and has no dialogue or narration.  The film presents remarkable aerial shots (courtesy of aerial film specialists Helifilms) of some the most astonishing places on Earth including vast urban slums, African grasslands, the sprawling

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Film review: RED 2, from Built For Speed

The novelty of Red was that the gun-totin’, fist-fightin’ action stars, Bruce Willis, John Malcovich and Helen Mirren were all well past 50.  This casting lent some senior-citizen empowerment, sophistication and philosophical reflection to the testosterone-fuelled world of the action movie.  Red was still pretty silly and implausible but it was clever enough to stand out from the usual action

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Film review: KICK-ASS 2, from Built For Speed

In a world full of noble, philosophical super-hero movies, 2010’s obscene, ultra-violent super-hero parody Kick Ass was a welcome shock to the system. Featuring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the superbly nerdy Dave Lizewski aka clutzy crime fighting fan-boy Kick Ass and his idols, foul mouthed pre-teen super-heroine Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her killing-machine father Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), Kick

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