Film review: X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, from Built For Speed

The film adaptations of Marvel’s X-Men Comics, which feature super-powered mutants or X-Men led by Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) battling super-villain Magneto (Ian McKellan) and fearful, prejudiced “normal” humans, began in startling fashion in 2000.  With 2006’s disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand and 2009’s clunky spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, though, the franchise seemed to be in very poor shape, at

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Film review: PRISONERS, from Built For Speed

The wonderfully tense and gruelling kidnap drama Prisoners is one of the year’s best films.  Relentlessly gripping and often disturbing, the film depicts a parent’s worst nightmare as two little girls mysteriously disappear from a Thanksgiving Day celebration. With the police investigation floundering, one of the girls’ Fathers, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and the investigating detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) resort

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Film review: LES MISERABLES, from Built For Speed

The problem with many film musicals is that, removed from the artificial world of the stage, the site of people bursting into song seems ridiculous. This becomes a bigger problem when the film goes for a gritty, realistic look as opposed to the deliberately staged look of the classic film musicals from the 1940’s and 50’s.   Les Miserables, a screen

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