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October 2024

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Wylie Writes’ One-On-One with Peter Lepeniotis

Ten years ago, I gained new respect for Peter Lepeniotis.  The Canadian animator was coming off the success of his first independently directed feature, The Nut Job, and he was very candid about the film industry with the audience at TIFF Kids.  He was a great storyteller and a fountain of knowledge.  But despite being a seasoned pro, Lepeniotis is still finding ways to challenge himself;  such as with R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town, the filmmaker’s live-action directorial…

Reviews

Your Monster

Your Monster is billed as a horror-fantasy, with notes of a rom-com, featuring a Broadway hopeful (Melissa Barrera) discovering a hunky beast (Tommy Dewey) in her closet. Sounds wild, right? What if I told you writer/director Caroline Lindy plays everything “straight”? What if I told you that the film is so quiet, you can hear the emptiness between lines of dialogue? Granted, this is a deliberate choice to play up the film’s quirkier qualities, but…

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Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue

Second Chance Productions’ Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue is an animated road movie for the kiddies that doesn’t pooch the audience on a good time. Prim-and-proper pup Gracie (voiced by Claire Alan) and feisty feline Pedro (voiced by Cory Doran) embark on their family’s big move to Salt Lake City, but the trip doesn’t go smoothly.  The animals topple off-track in their shared carrier before boarding their plane and end up missing their flight.  Realizing…

Reviews

Goodrich

By: Addison Wylie Preceding an amicable exchange between ex-lovers, Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) is asked by his former wife Ann (Andie MacDowell) how he’s doing. “I’m okay,” Andy answers. “You’re always okay,” Ann teases. She isn’t wrong. Throughout Goodrich, the audience observes Andy doing okay. He occasionally has an awkward conversation that sometimes references his past as a flawed father but, otherwise, he’s a well-respected and levelheaded dude.

Reviews

The Apprentice

Donald Trump has denounced The Apprentice.  Not to be confused with his hit reality show of the past, The Apprentice is a docudrama chronicling the relationship between Trump and lawyer Roy Cohn.  But, it seems as though the former president has misinterpreted Ali Abbasi’s movie as a biopic on his life as a businessman-turn-infamous mogul.  There are biographical elements to The Apprentice , but the focus isn’t specific enough to be a Trump biopic.  If Trump had stepped back, he would’ve seen that…

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Woman of the Hour

Academy Award nominee Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) makes her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, a period crime drama centred around a game show where one of the contestants is an unidentified serial killer. Kendrick stars as Sheryl, a down-and-out actor who hasn’t secured her bearings since moving to Los Angeles to fulfil her dreams of an acting career. When offered a role as a “bachelorette avidly searching for true love”, and after…

Reviews

Lee

The assumption to presume there’s a personal connection between director Ellen Kuras and photographer Lee Miller, the subject of Kuras’ feature-length narrative debut Lee, isn’t that rash.  An obvious interest for camerawork is shared between Kuras and Miller, and the passion for the craft may have also rubbed off on star Kate Winslet (who Kuras has worked with previously on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and A Little Chaos, and is credited as an executive producer on Lee). …

Reviews

The Forest Hills

The Forest Hills is a pulverizing experience.  The audience is constantly led astray by too many dead ends in the story.  But on the other hand, Shelley Duvall.  Movie goers are senselessly deafened by an ungainly and painful lead performance by Chiko Mendez.  But then again, Shelley Duvall.  Starlets from classic horror movies appear in extended cameos to bait movie buffs along, but their performances are flat.  But also, Shelley Duvall.

Reviews

The Outrun

In The Outrun, Rona (Little Women’s Saoirse Ronan) finds herself using alcohol as a coping mechanism.  However, she’s also aware that she may be abusing the escape from reality.  Trying her best to occupy herself with passions, relationships and changes in scenery, her inability to control urges to binge drink distances herself from her parents and her selfless boyfriend Daynin (Papa Essiedu), as well as places her in harm’s way.

Reviews

Frankie Freako

By: Addison Wylie Steven Kostanski is a gifted filmmaker who can effortlessly emulate styles and fads of the past.  But for as resourceful and accurate as he is, Kostanski has a habit of working in reverse; placing more attention on the final product rather than thinking about who his work should be geared towards.  However, Kostanski’s recent sci-fi/buddy comedy Psycho Goreman suggested that the writer/director was considering his viewers more.  His latest indie Frankie Freako, a throwback with similar…