By: Addison Wylie It’s unfortunate to report that Hotel Transylvania is a disappointment. Even young children will pick up on how often this neat set-up is treated as a one-note joke. Hotel Transylvania has everything a kid could want from a timely Halloween release including oodles of monsters. Frankenstein (voiced by Kevin James), the Invisible Man (voiced by David Spade), a talking werewolf (voiced by Steve Buscemi), and a mummy (voiced by CeeLo Green) all…
By: Addison Wylie It’s hard to make a solid judgement on the indie hit Beasts of the Southern Wild. On the one hand, it deserves praise for doing what it does so well. On the flip side, it does what it does so well, that it becomes frustrating. Based on her one-act play called Juicy and Delicious, Lucy Alibar and director Benh Zeitlin adapt the story of survival after a tremendous flood for the big…
By: Addison Wylie Everyone has their own guilty pleasures when it comes to movies. I’m just glad mine also looks pretty and has a great soundtrack. I feel bad calling Dredd 3D a guilty pleasure because I don’t feel guilty for liking it. I liked it a lot, in fact. My affection for Pete Travis’ revamping of Judge Dredd isn’t solely rooted in its visuals – although they certainly are a strong point. Same goes…
By: Addison Wylie I must come clean. I stopped watching the Resident Evil flicks after the second, Apocalypse. I didn’t think the first two outings were bad movies – decent at best – but I stopped watching because they never really appealed to me. Mind you, this was a time where I didn’t have aspirations to be a film critic and I could be more choosey with what I wanted to indulge in. Now that…
By: Addison Wylie Finding 3Dmo, an alternate title that unfortunately isn’t sticking no matter how much I tweet it, is Disney’s latest post-conversion effort. Bouncing back from January’s underwhelming post-conversion work on Disney’s classic The Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo 3D is an excellent example as to why these post-conversions are not a waste of time or money. Like they did with The Lion King 3D, Disney can use this new technology to make…
By: Addison Wylie It’s easy for the public to slap negative accusations on the political documentary 2016: Obama’s America. It’s almost asking for it with its timely release during the current presidential race. I’m a critic who enjoys watching a variety of different movies but I’m also someone who hasn’t been keeping up with current politics nor knows a lot about US President Barack Obama’s history and what makes him tick. In a way though,…
By: Addison Wylie I have no doubt that many will walk out of Pitch Perfect, the comedy/musical about competitive glee clubs, either singing or humming with a smile on their faces as the credits roll. But when deciding whether or not Pitch Perfect is a good movie itself, one has to decide if they’re rating the movie on the musical elements or the movie as a whole. Pitch Perfect is Jason Moore’s feature film debut….
By: Addison Wylie For a Good Time, Call… uses colourful language whenever it can. It needs to. When a film has two lead characters opening up their own phone sex hotline, naughty language is a prerequisite – and the film has certainly earned its R rating. However, the film also needs the salty language to cover up just how lifeless the film is. If actresses Lauren Miller and Ari Graynor talk excessively about penises and…
By: Addison Wylie LOL, a film starring Miley Cyrus directed by Lisa Azuelos, is wildly inconsistent. It’s consistently inconsistent. I didn’t think such a thing would be possible. But, what’s even more confusing, is how badly Azuelos has dropped the ball. LOL is the North American remake of a French film she made earlier in her career called LOL (Laughing Out Loud). Having not seen the original and only reading the plot synopsis online, LOL…
By: Addison Wylie I don’t like the route that these new documentaries from DisneyNature have taken. Plain and simple. I don’t like how facts have taken a backseat and cute stitched together stories have taken the forefront. These are documentaries after all, not straight forward narratives. Understandably, Disney is making these films for a young target audience. But still, young acquiring minds don’t mind the odd instance of factual information. These nature documentaries draw in…