By: Addison Wylie A film flying in from the UK called My Brother the Devil is sure to catch North American audiences off guard. It’s a compelling piece of work and an exceptional feature film debut from writer/director Sally El Hosaini, providing plenty of challenges for her characters as well as for her audience. Movie goers will be glued to the screen as a pivotal event changes the lifestyles of those driving Hosaini’s story. Brothers…
By: Addison Wylie About 75% of The Lone Ranger is immensely enjoyable and everything you’d want in a Summer blockbuster. It’s just unfortunate that 25% of it doesn’t reach the heights that director Gore Verbinski hits preceding and after the saggy middle portion of his film. Let’s get the cons out of the way, because I’d much rather remember The Lone Ranger for its amiable feats. After some hard-hitting fights and likeable introductions to a…
By: Addison Wylie Developing an opinion about Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring is serving to be a struggle. I don’t know what to make of it. On one hand, it’s becomes a slightly tedious ordeal to sit and watch empty-headed dopes essentially stare at each other as well as at themselves through mirrors and webcams. They also stare at their phones and material possessions until one of them breaks and takes a picture with their…
By: Addison Wylie Noah Baumbach’s most uplifting film to date (which is a major step up when comparing his latest to his last effort – the overly cynical and absolutely annoying Greenberg) has an almost immediately disarming look and feel to it. Taking on the aesthetics of a first or second year student thesis project, the black-and-white dramedy feels normal once we can identify what Baumbach’s movie resembles – leading us to focus on what…
By: Addison Wylie I went into The Sheepdogs Have At It with interested, persuasive ears. I had heard some of the band’s work and liked it, but never found myself yearning to find out more about the band members themselves. I would take the music at face value and soak in the nostalgia that lined the tracks. The Sheepdogs Have At It offered insights here and there regarding how the band got started and how…
By: Addison Wylie The MPAA has given the latest instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise a PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality, and language”. From the sounds of that, Fast & Furious 6 should be a wild time at the movies. So, why was I so bored? Whether you walked away from Fast Five liking it or not, you at least could’ve left the theatre with some…
By: Addison Wylie The apocalyptic comedy This Is The End is a pretty good directorial debut from screenwriters/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and on top of that, it’s pretty funny. More notably, it’s just about the closest thing North American cinema will get to emulating the meta movies of UK filmmaker Michael Winterbottom – for now Winterbottom has made popular films featuring actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Their…
By: Addison Wylie If Goran Kalezic’s film was conceived a few years earlier, I’m certain Larry the Cable Guy would’ve played Victor Altomare’s leading role. The Great Chameleon has all those traits one would find in the comic’s low-brow outings – including a cast made up of fairly familiar and puzzled faces as well as cringe-worthy politically incorrectness trying to pass as humour. I think my passiveness towards poorly written, brash racial stereotypes in recent…
By: Addison Wylie I hate Birdemic: Shock and Terror. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Where most midnight movie lovers embraced its incompetent “so bad, it’s good” charm, I found it to be furiously annoying and “so bad, it’s bad”. How anyone thought that Birdemic: Shock and Terror was releasable is beyond me. You would think director/screenwriter James Nguyen must’ve had that thought cross his mind between takes of his actors swinging…
By: Addison Wylie If you think you know Divine, think again. At least, that was the thought swimming through my head as I discovered new information about the drag queen turned actor turned musician turned superstar. As a high school movie fanatic eager to watch anything and everything, I thought I had found the ultimate lost artifact when I picked up a copy of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. When I saw Divine’s Babs Johnson compete…