The Trip was one of recent cinema and television’s comic highlights. Beginning as a TV show it featured comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves in a semi-fictionalised scenario as they toured England’s Lake District sampling its food and culture. The TV series and its compressed cinema version mixed foodie lifestyle show with the two leads’ wonderfully acerbic but
Read moreThis week on Built For Speed we take a look at two films set in the world’s trouble spots: Good Vibrations returns us to Northern Ireland in the late 70’s where punk impresario Terri Hooley, against all odds, established his famous record shop and punk label. We also venture into the West Bank for the intense Palestinian drama Omar. There’s
Read moreThe latest screen incarnation of Godzilla was preceded by one of the more enticing trailers of recent times. It depicted a team of paratroopers descending through an ominously dark and cloudy sky to the eerie strains of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Reqium otherwise known as the monolith music from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was spooky, menacing and instantly grabbed the attention
Read moreQissa Indian/ German co-production Qissa (the title roughly means ‘fable’) is powerful and at times disturbing mix of family drama, social commentary and supernatural fantasy that provides a sobering view of the status of women in India. Set during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, the film features Life of Pi’s Irrfan Khan as Umber Singh an authoritarian and
Read moreBad Neighbours seems to have been spawned by a vaguely interesting idea, to mix Animal House-style frat boy comedy with the rambling, 30-something relationship comedy of Judd Apatow. Unfortunately, Bad Neighbours takes the worst aspects of both, namely the crass, juvenile gags of the frat boy movie and the unfocused momentum-free narrative of a Judd Apatow film to create a
Read moreFading Gigolo is the Woody Allen film you have when you don’t have a Woody Allen film. Apart from an appearance by Woody himself, the film features a romanticised upscale New York setting, Jewish humour and cultural insights and jaunty jazz music all built around a quirky yet moving romance. With its low-budget look and heavily filtered cinematography by Marco
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