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2015

Reviews

Smosh: The Movie

November 7, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie Camp Takota and Bad Night are movies that unassumingly and depthlessly grant access to today’s YouTube-addled youth through celebrity appeal.  To my recollection, Smosh: The Movie is the first film to actually submerge itself in YouTube culture and say interesting things about how we perceive online content.  There are also jokes involving a microphone being shoved up a bum and a love interest nicknamed “Butt Massage Girl”.  Ass jokes and modern philosophy – the film is colonophical. As…

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Reviews

The Editor

November 6, 2015Addison Wylie3 Comments

By: Shahbaz Khayambashi The Winnipeg-based Astron-6 film collective has made a career out of churning out 1980s-inspired pastiches, so it was only a matter of time before they gave giallo – the Italian horror subgenre that is equal parts noir and splatter – their treatment with The Editor. Here, the hero is a film editor with a tragic past who makes a living editing exploitation films.  As he edits the film-within-a-film, life imitates art and several of…

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Reviews

Ally Was Screaming

November 5, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie As much as I would like to commend writer/director Jeremy Thomas for making a sophisticated and adult film about grief and the internal struggle to define what is morally correct, his woeful feature Ally Was Screaming is an anticlimactic and overcooked blunder that drove me crazy.  Although, Thomas’ maturity is essentially what was much needed in January’s I Put a Hit on You. Seth, Nole, and Ally were a friendly and tender trifecta….

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Reviews

Bad Night

November 4, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie Bad Night is that sleepy student who draws open eyes on their eyelids to convince you that they’re interested.  But, if you were to poke them, they would fall backwards like a flimsy stage flat – likewise for this detatched action/comedy starring YouTube stars Lauren Elizabeth Luthringshausen and Jenn McAllister (aka. Jennxpenn). The film has been brought to us by Chris and Nick Riedell – the directorial coupling who also brought us Camp…

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Reviews

Creep

November 1, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie Around the time Patrick Brice’s sex comedy The Overnight hit theatres, movie goers were also presented with the filmmaker’s take on the horror behind obsession and abandonment in his seedy DIY flick called Creep. Creep is told from the perspective of Aaron, a videographer who is rolling lots of tape because he’s been told to.  Aaron has answered a Craigslist ad posted by someone who was in need of a cameraman to document a personal…

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Reviews

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

October 30, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie I remember describing Paranormal Activity 3 as an innovative horror film.  I remember excitingly telling friends, family, and co-workers about its cunning use of a camera propped on an oscillating fan engine.  The thought of this fearsome manoeuvre making everyone in my packed theatre squirm with anticipation was a memory for the books. With this “final” chapter in the Paranormal Activity series, I sat in a theatre full of unimpressed fans, and…

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Reviews

Truth

October 30, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Trevor Jeffery Truth is a factually interesting docudrama, with the unfortunate side effect of also being a huge downer – how can you chippily walk away from a film if its thesis is essentially “modern journalism is dead”? It’s 2004, just months before the American Presidential election, and Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) has got a story.  And as a producer for CBS’s documentary/news series 60 Minutes, she’s got a platform.  She’s uncovered that there…

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Reviews

Fat

October 29, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie Fat is light on a traditional plot.  However, what Mark Phinney’s directorial debut lacks in regularity is reimbursed by a meaningful portrayal of human behaviour.  I’m even hesitant to call Fat a character study since the focus is so widespread across its cast. Overcoming a death in his family and a difficult break-up, Ken turns to food for relief.  But, what started as a coping mechanism has taken over Ken’s life in the form of…

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Reviews

Burnt

October 29, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Trevor Jeffery Burnt is a dash of unabashed wet dream of a 40-something’s longing for the bohemian days of his twenties, with a hint of a decently entertaining film about a world-class chef and the intra-kitchen dynamics of a quality start-up restaurant in London.  Sauté in quality performances for 100 minutes. In John Wells’ Burnt, Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) is a former hot-shot chef who fell into the hard life, got clean, and wants…

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Reviews

Going In and Coming Out: Wacken 3D – Louder Than Hell

October 28, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Anthony King GOING IN: It’s time to head to Germany for the biggest, loudest, and probably craziest heavy metal festival on the planet;  a three day festival where you’re free to release that inner metal freak, and scream or growl all day and night to your heart’s content.  Every year, the small village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein Germany hosts the Wacken Open Air festival featuring heavy metal bands from Lamb of God to Alice Cooper….

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