Film review: ‘HARD TRUTHS’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

For over 50 years British auteur Mike Leigh has been powerfully depicting the lives of disaffected people and those who don’t fit society’s prescribed mould.  Who could forget Lesley Manville as the desperately lonely outsider in Leigh’s brilliant Another Year.  His films are uniquely insightful about the human condition but often difficult to watch. The title of Leigh’s latest film,

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Film review: ‘THE SUBSTANCE’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

French writer/ director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance disturbingly updates Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray and adds a smattering of Showgirls for a gruesome body horror satire of Hollywood, the beauty industry and the damaging expectations placed on women. In an unsettlingly appropriate piece of casting, Demi Moore plays celebrity aerobics trainer Elisabeth Sparkle who hosts a successful Jane

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Film review: ‘RUNT’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

While its plot and thickly layered Australiana are a little clichéd, Runt, from director John Sheedy, is still a very sweet, charming family film that represents another instalment in the ‘amazing animal’ film sub-genre. The title character (played by a dog named Squid) is a stray terrier who lives in the fictitious remote Australian town of Upson Downs.  Having just

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