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

Writer/ Director M. Night Shyamalan has become a strange addiction for filmgoers.  After the first magical rush of The Sixth Sense 25 years ago, we’ve been chasing that cinematic high ever since… but it has never come.  Some of his films have started promisingly, featured some novel ideas and contained inventive visuals but they’ve invariably given way to glaring tonal

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Film review: ‘A HAUNTING IN VENICE’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

Following Murder on The Orient Express and Death On The Nile, A Haunting In Venice is the third entry in Kenneth Branagh’s vivid, energetic but at times erratic and overcooked Agatha Christie adaptations.  Like the two previous films, this one benefits from a few standout performances and its probing of detective Hercule Poirot’s formidable intellect and complex psyche.  More than

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

While it doesn’t always hit the mark, in its best moments the jet-black culinary comedy The Menu cleverly (and violently) skewers foodie pretention, the cult of celebrity chefs, the loss of artistic credibility and America’s unspoken class system. There are familiar flavours here with dashes of Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Haneke, disturbing dinner party dramas like Luis Bunuel’s The

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