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
Read moreThe dark, erudite, acerbic, if somewhat repetitive drama, The Forgiven, is a confronting story of guilt, vengeance and the clash of western and middle eastern cultures. Ralph Fiennes plays the bitterly cynical alcoholic doctor, David Henninger who, along with American wife Jo (Jessica Chastain), finds himself in a twisting moral dilemma. While driving to an extravagant party at rich, eccentric
Read moreThe Cohen brother’s latest film Hail, Caesar!, a satire of Hollywood’s golden age of the early 1950’s, is an engaging movie rather than the witty, insightful and confronting film we expect from the Cohens. Set at the feverish production lot of fictitious Capitol Pictures, the film sees hard-nosed executive Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) constantly trying to extinguish fires created by
Read moreThis week on Built For Speed we speak to Gus Macmillan from the band Blue Grassy Knoll about their orchestral score for the Buster Keaton film The General which will be screened at the Melbourne Recital Centre on July 24th. We also take a look at the two current films featuring the talents of Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel,
Read moreThere are a few swinging voters like myself but It seems most people either love or hate Wes Anderson’s supremely quirky picture-postcard fantasies. His latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is such a fun ride, however, that it may even seduce the detractors. Like the antique dioramas Anderson often displays in his movies, this film reveals its story through several
Read moreWith their wonderful, ornate prose and vivid imagery, Charles Dickens’ novels seem ideally suited to cinema adaptations. David Lean realized this potential magnificently with his atmospheric 1946 version of Great Expectations. Less successful was Alfonso Cuaron’s miscalculated modern day version of Great Expectations with Ethan Hawke and Robert de Niro. The latest adaptation of this novel, from British director Mike
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