Film review: CRIMSON PEAK, from ‘Built For Speed’

Guillermo del Toro is renowned for ornate gothic horror films in which sinewy monsters, representing the threat to the average person of political oppression and other ills, emerge from the perceived safety of the family home. His latest film Crimson Peak adopts a similar approach and delivers much of the mystery, the sense of unease and visual artistry of his

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Film review: MAPS TO THE STARS, from Built For Speed.

From Day of the Locust’s nightmarish vision of a perverse and corrupt Hollywood to Mulholland Drive’s dream of stardom turned nightmare, many films have explored the bizarre and disturbing underbelly of Hollywood.  David Cronenberg’s latest film, Maps To The Stars explores this world through the director’s typically bizarre and unsettling vision. In Cronenberg’s nihilistic take on tinsel town, Hollywood is

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Film review: ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, from Built For Speed

After a four year hiatus, Director Jim Jarmusch returns with his latest film Only Lovers Left Alive a typically quirky Jarmusch take on the much-abused vampire sub-genre.  Slow moving and largely uneventful this droll mix of horror film, gothic romance and rock star biopic provides a perplexing, occasionally amusing but underwhelming experience. Thor’s Tom Hiddleston plays Adam an ancient yet ageless

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Film review: TRACKS, from Built For Speed

Tracks, starring Mia Wasikowska, dramatises Robyn Davidson’s best-selling book which chronicled her epic 1,700 kilometre journey from Alice Springs to Uluru and the Indian Ocean in 1977. Davidson trekked on foot with four camels carrying supplies and her dog Diggity as company.  Reluctantly, she allowed awkward American National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan (Adam Driver) to meet up with her every

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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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