By: Trevor Jeffery There are so many documentaries covering atrocities. It’s easy, or necessary, to forget that sometimes; there is so much horror that to consider it all – all the time – isn’t healthy. The Look of Silence isn’t so much about the importance of its subject, or about squeezing emotions from an increasingly apathetic audience. It’s about humanity and acts of evil, and how people will twist their perspective to retain the last…
By: Addison Wylie Trainwreck is much more than a vehicle for rising comedic star Amy Schumer. It’s easily Judd Apatow’s strongest work as a filmmaker, evidence that Schumer’s honesty flows through her long form screenwriting, and the best romantic comedy this critic has seen since 2008’s criminally underrated Definitely, Maybe. Definitely, Maybe is a standard sort of rom-com, where Trainwreck sends home the same type of charm but also reflects contemporary pessimism towards romance. It…
By: Addison Wylie If Rob Cohen’s The Boy Next Door is an indication of anything, it’s that American filmmakers are still having grave difficulty making erotic thrillers without avoiding camp. Nowadays, it’s almost a requirement for the movie to fly off the rails. A film like The Boy Next Door often has the viewer questioning if the filmmakers were making a bad movie on purpose. A movie gullible audiences could innocently flock to and get…
By: Addison Wylie Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s film is a foreign drama that isn’t subtitled, translated, or dubbed. Every character communicates in sign language as movie goers are given the broad strokes of a crime-laden story. However, Slaboshpitsky’s screenplay is unrelenting, and leaves little to the imagination when it comes to displaying desperate and heartless activity. For the first ten minutes, The Tribe is an unforgettable, sensory depraved experience. One of the first scenes features a celebration…
By: Addison Wylie The metric system has never been more sexy or sentimental than it is in Bent Hamer’s 1001 Grams. Now that I have your attention, let’s move towards some of the drier details. Marie (played by Ane Dahl Torp) is a Norwegian scientist who is close with her intellect father Ernst Ernst (played by Stein Winge). Both of their careers circulate around the analysis of measurements, and they both discuss work during their smoke…
By: Addison Wylie As an experiment and as an escape, Suzanne Crocker and her family packed up necessities (including a video camera) and took to Canada’s Yukon Territory for nine months. Suzanne and her husband Gerard Parsons wanted their children to experience the great outdoors and witness the change of the seasons; illustrating that technology and a fixed schedule doesn’t always capture what’s really going on in the world. The trip, however, was equally refreshing…
By: Mark Barber Current representations of Sherlock Holmes are filled with weighty world-threatening stakes and explosive action sequences. Bill Condon’s more peaceful and contemplative Mr. Holmes seeks to rectify that inclination, offering a more poignant take on the famous deerstalker-wearing detective. Indeed, Sherlock’s trademark cap never appears in the film, and for good reason. Mr. Holmes is about the interplay between fact and fiction, spending much of its running time reconciling the elderly Holmes’ (Ian…
By: Addison Wylie The characters in the Australian/Ireland import Strangerland are surrounded by miles of flatland. The tattered town of Nathgari maintain a tight community, yet there is a sense of feeling forlorn and stranded. Newly minted feature filmmaker Kim Farrant uses these qualities to effectively stir up restlessness and sputtering hope when her story of missing children is in full swing. Catherine and Matthew (played by Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes) are still adapting…
By: Addison Wylie American gross-out comedies were so popular during the birth of the 2000s, Canadian cinema hopped on board. I vividly remember Mark Griffiths’ road trip flick Going the Distance and Dave Thomas’ workplace scrub clad comedy Intern Academy being released in 2004, and producing piddly groans. Canadian filmmakers are hitting another “monkey see, monkey do” phase as movie goers flock towards the comedic chops of Judd Apatow and his filmmaking protégés. Just like…
By: Addison Wylie With The Wedding Ringer, you get what you came for. But, just barely. It helps when you compare Jeremy Garelick’s film next to other recent R-rated comedies that take place around a wedding. It’s far better than That’s My Boy, and is narrowly beat out by What’s Your Number?. That’s a pretty pitiful way to look at things, but at this point, I’ll take whatever I can get. The Wedding Ringer also…