Film review: KON TIKI, from Built For Speed

Kon Tiki has nothing to do with drunken Aussies on package overseas holiday tours. Instead, it’s a dramatisation of the amazing journey taken across the Pacific Ocean in 1947 by Norwegian archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl. Thor believed that, a thousand years ago, Polynesians had originally journeyed to the pacific islands from South America rather than Asia as was popularly believed. When

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Film review: WARM BODIES, from Built For Speed

I have to confess, I’m not normally a fan of zombie movies and that includes lauded films like 28 Days Later.  I generally find the sight of people in bad make-up shuffling around and eating gizzards pretty tedious.  Warm Bodies, however, is a different kind of zombie film.  First of all, it’s told from a zombie’s perspective and secondly it

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Film review: THERESE DESQUEYROUX, from Built For Speed

Like its title character, Therese Desqueyroux has a refined surface beauty and a subdued manner but with tension and despair bubbling underneath. The troubled Thérèse (Audrey Tatou) is a free spirit, an intellectual and seemingly in love with another woman, Anne (Anais Demoustier) or at least the memory of the passionate friendship and freedom they shared as teenagers.  Thérèse is,

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Film review: FIRST POSITION, from Built For Speed

Like horse racing, car racing and mime, ballet is not a spectacle that I find interesting. It’s a testament, therefore, to the quality of ballet documentary First Position that someone like myself who has little interest in the art depicted found the film riveting from start to finish. The film focuses on a group of aspiring young dancers as they

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Film review: SCARY MOVIE 5, from Built For Speed

The first Scary Movie was a gleefully juvenile parody of 1990’s teen slasher movies such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. With its irreverent attitude toward the source material and plethora of obscene sex jokes it was kind edgy for its time. There was, however, no need for even one sequel to Scary Movie but amazingly

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Film review: SLEEPWALK WITH ME, from Built For Speed

Sleepwalk With Me is a gentle but not particularly funny romantic comedy written and directed by and starring This American Life’s Mike Birbiglia. He plays the pudgy, doleful 30-something Matt Pandamiglio, a wanna-be stand-up comedian whose career has advanced to the point of mopping up vomit in a bar.  Averse to adult responsibility, he has also spent eight years dodging

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