New Zealand director Taika Waititi has been one of the more surprising Hollywood success stories. His idiosyncratically Kiwi comedies have leapt over cultural barriers to gain the attention of major Hollywood players and earn him A-list status. Some, like myself, may not have entirely warmed to his droll, piss-taking style of humour although the fact that it infiltrated the vast
Read moreIt’s here folks, this Friday ‘Built For Speed’ will once again provide the perfect complement (and hopefully not antidote) to Christmas Cheer with our Christmas Special. We’ll play a selection of our favourite Christmas tunes and hopefully prove that the Christmas is not a wasteland for rock and pop music. We’ll also keep the film reivews coming as we take
Read moreSorry We Missed You is another gruelling and vitally important piece of social realism from veteran British director Ken Loach. There was a lot of talk about Joker capturing the destructive desperation of life at the lower end of the socio-economic scale but that film looks fanciful compared to this raw, sincere and heart-wrenching drama. Sorry We Missed You explores
Read moreMartin Scorsese’s iconic gangster films such as Goodfellas and Casino have given us fascinating insights into the history and mechanics of American organised crime and the male rituals that define gangster behaviour. These films have an amphetamine-fuelled rock’n’roll rush which, while exhilarating, don’t leave a lot of space for emotional introspection or a critique of gangster culture. In his latest
Read moreThis Friday on ‘Built For Speed’ begins a series of specials as we take a look at the music, films and TV of the 2010’s. This week we’ll be playing our favourite tunes from the first half of the decade (roughly 2010-2014) and talking about some of the best and worst movies and TV from the period. We’ll also have
Read moreAfter a lumbering foray into the Star Wars franchise with The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson returns to what he does best, quirky character-based crime dramas in the flawed but highly enjoyable murder mystery Knives Out. The film plays like an alternate reality Agatha Christie story as a group of suspects (played by a typical all-star cast) gather at a
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