Set in a haunted hotel, the highly enjoyable low-budget horror flick The Innkeepers plays like a film student’s homage to The Shining. There’s nothing revelatory or unique about this film, it’s all spooky, whispering voices and people unwisely going down to the basement to look for ghosties. Still, there are some very tense moments aided by excellent eerie sound effects
Read moreSacha Baron Cohen is one of the great comic talents of recent decades, just look at the Ali G Show, Borat and his turn in Talladega Nights. Very little of this comic talent is evident, however, in his latest film The Dictator. This film is essentially a collection of crass, juvenile gags that offer far less wit, inventiveness or originality
Read moreJohnny Depp loves playing eccentric, campily-attired, strangely-voiced characters, particularly when he collaborates with director Tim Burton. He’s delivered bizarre performances of varying quality in Burton flicks such as Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and most memorably in the biopic of Plan 9 from Outer Space director Ed Wood. Playing an 18th century gentleman vampire reawakened in the early
Read moreWish You Were Here is a new Australian mystery thriller that has nothing to do with the classic Pink Floyd album of the same name. Being a contemporary Australian film it of course stars Joel Edgerton as a stressed bogan family man and has a fragmented narrative structure. The film jumps back and forth through time, feeding the audience slivers
Read moreThere have been plenty of films about US Special Forces battling terrorists and drug lords and most of these have involved outrageous, cartoonish propaganda, racially stereotyped bad guys, simplistic, biased notions of world conflict and Chuck Norris. Acts of Valour has all these things, minus the Chuck Norris. For many critics this film is an abomination but it’s not designed
Read moreThis week on Built For Speed we pay tribute to the music of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch he who sadly died on Friday of last week. We’ll have a selection of Beasties tracks including the band’s complex, pop-culture referencing hip-hop and their forays into hardcore punk. Also, this week, 40 years ago The Rolling Stones released Exile on Main Street
Read more