By: Addison Wylie Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police has the novelty of guitarist Andy Summers reading his memoir to which this film is based on. The audience watches Andy Grieve expansive documentary with full investment, but the experience feels more like a tell-all with a legend. Summers takes us on his journey beginning with his dog days of cutting his teeth in the music industry. He glides through his past roles in other bands…
By: Addison Wylie Within the first five minutes of Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Paul’s mother gets hit by a truck and dies. She had it easy – she didn’t have to watch the movie. In 2009, I remember Paul Blart as an innocently amusing klutz. Kevin James played a clumsy stereotype, but threw himself in the role of someone who hadn’t experienced the world outside his beloved shopping centre. When his territory was threatened,…
By: Addison Wylie It’s often said that art reflects life. Unfriended turns the mirror towards a modern age of teenagers who sometimes veer on being brain dead, yet can problem solve with the drop of a hat when they need to use technology. Twenty years ago, a movie would only call on one token techie. Now, a movie can afford to fill its roster with this type of character. While Unfriended deals with terrors that…
3 Still Standing (DIR. Robert Campos, Donna LoCicero) By: Trevor Jeffery What do you call three comics who keep doing stand-up instead of landing a sitcom role? “Working”. 3 Still Standing looks into the lives of three comedians who never took their career beyond the microphone. In their early days, political satirist Will Durst, funny everyman Johnny Steele and self deprecating Larry “Bubbles” Brown were part of the 1980s San Francisco comedy boom that launched careers…
Monty Python: The Meaning of Life (DIR. Roger Graef, James Rogan) By: Addison Wylie If Monty Python Live (Mostly) was the comedy troupe’s last hurrah, Monty Python: The Meaning of Life is their congratulatory curtain call and encore. It goes without saying that Roger Graef and James Rogan’s film is essential viewing for any Monty Python fan, or anyone who caught their live show. This documentary provides audiences with alternate angles, exclusive behind-the-scenes tomfoolery, and…
Being Canadian (DIR. Robert Cohen) By: Addison Wylie Comedy writer Robert Cohen hits the road to Vancouver with a documentary crew in Being Canadian, a humorous look at Canadiana. Cohen’s goal is to reclaim Canada’s identity and deconstruct the stereotypes that have long followed Canucks; including igloo assumptions, shabby television programming, adamant politeness, and the country’s overflowing supply of comedy legends. Cohen’s dry wit and bewildered fascination drives this labour of love (no pun intended) in…
By: Addison Wylie Actor Jason Bateman narrates Pump as if he’s providing a voiceover for a car commercial. This is fitting since a large chunk of the documentary feels like one extra-long commercial for alternative fuels and electric vehicles. However, Joshua and Rebecca Harrell Tickell have conceived a lively, well intended film that I ended up being quite fond for. Many documentaries chronicling selfish behaviour behind big business (or, in this case, Big Oil) have…
By: Addison Wylie Where there’s a Howie Mandel production, Vic Cohen is most likely close by. It’s quite obvious the two comedians are close supportive friends, however audiences are seeing that connection run deeper in the documentary Committed. For twelve years, Mandel has recorded Cohen with a video camera and chronicled his budding career as a comic and as an outrageous, fearless performer. The documentary has been also been shaped by co-directors Reed Grinsell and Steve…
Elephant’s Dream (DIR. Kristof Bilsen) By: Addison Wylie As Kinshasa’s struggling economy heals after the civil war in the DRC, its population waits for stable change. People try to march on with their community through unfortunate situations with limited resources, but it’s achingly hard. A sequence featuring a reckless fire burning downtown shows the audience how dire Kinshasa’s firefighting team is. Supreme danger spirals out of control, the help is flustered, and panicked pedestrians criticize. …
By: Addison Wylie I truly believe that everyone starring in The Forger knows they’re capable of more. John Travolta, Tye Sheridan, Christopher Plummer, everyone. There are moments in Philip Martin’s crime thriller where you can catch an actor glimpse at a chance to open up their performance, but these fleeting breaths are revoked by Martin’s generic filmmaking and Richard D’Ovidio’s routine screenplay. First of all, Travolta doesn’t fit the build of art theif Ray Cutter….