Latest

2014

Reviews

The Interview

By: Addison Wylie If Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen are going to be filmmakers, they really should write their own material.  Their directorial debut and sleeper hit This Is the End sustained itself because of their clever weisenheimer writing satirizing self-involved Hollywood socialites. With their highly anticipated and controversial second feature The Interview, the pair are responsible for the story along with Dan Sterling.  However, this time, they’ve abandoned the screenwriting phase and let Sterling…

Movie Lists

Wylie Writes’ Ten Best Movies of 2014

2014 was a mediocre moviegoing year, but it wasn’t without some fantastic flicks. Documentaries particularly rose to the occasion. Select filmmakers started out with a simple subject, but then were forced to change their perspective every time a new layer was stripped away. Because of that, Being Ginger and Kung Fu Elliot were really special docs considering how personal they became. Movie goers also received an eclectic palette of comedies. It was a year where studios were…

Reviews

The Skeleton Twins

By: Addison Wylie I liked Craig Johnson’s indie The Skeleton Twins, but it’s a stickler of a movie to justify.  It hardly has a narrative except when it peppers in a loose story towards the final leg, and it’s a character study that’s light on characterization.  To say it’s either one or the other doesn’t feel right.  Without the film’s stellar leading performances, The Skeleton Twins truly would be floating. Johnson has recruited Saturday Night…

Movie Lists

Wylie Writes’ Ten Worst Movies of 2014

By: Addison Wylie There’s an unspoken rule to being a film critic that states we’re not allowed to complain about our job.  We are offered free movies, we get to talk to fascinating people, and we get to offer our two cents to our own moviegoing communities.  But, I would like to think – every once in a while – we’re allowed to vent about how much mediocrity we take in on a yearly basis….

Reviews

No Good Deed

By: Addison Wylie I consider Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson as two of today’s most capable actors.  Elba is becoming more of a household name thanks to his appearances in Marvel’s universe, and his highly regarded turn as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.  Henson remains as someone who makes you breathe a sigh of relief when they suddenly grace the screen in middling fare like Date Night and Larry Crowne.  She…

Reviews

Last Days in Vietnam

By: Gesilayefa Azorbo Last Days in Vietnam, directed by Rory Kennedy, is a gripping look back at the massive, often unsanctioned evacuations of South Vietnamese citizens and Americans in Vietnam that were undertaken in the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War.  This is a story told through meticulously researched archival footage and interviews with key players in the US and Vietnamese military and state departments – including Henry Kissinger himself – as well as…

Reviews

The Quiet Ones

By: Addison Wylie By this point, you pay to see The Quiet Ones and sort of know it’s going to be the fifty-seventh by-the-numbers possession film you’ve seen within the past decade.  You get a vibe that the film is riding off the success of other, more successful horror films and a lot of the scares will be abiding by the rules of “gotcha” spooks. The Quiet Ones reminded me of movies like The Conjuring…

Reviews

The Starving Games

By: Addison Wylie Reviewing The Starving Games won’t take very long, so leave your coat and shoes on. This halfhearted send-up to The Hunger Games has been pieced, glued, taped, and mashed together by infamous spoofmeisters Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.  It crawls and wheezes to feature length, yet only has enough material to fund a commercial bumper on the MTV Movie Awards – even that is pushing it. Friedberg and Seltzer have never hit a…

Reviews

Planes: Fire & Rescue

By: Addison Wylie The Planes franchise is not for me.  However, I’m not a seven-year-old boy who’s obsessed with airplanes and other miscellaneous aviary vehicles – the demographic these films are so clearly for. That’s not to snub the seven-year-old boy who likes to play with toy airplanes in his parents’ living room.  Being a kid is a great time and should be cerished.  There’s a lack of responsibilities, you have no dire worries, and…

Reviews

Nightcrawler

By: Addison Wylie The nightlife throbs in Nightcrawler.  When the streets are sparse and the air is humid, there’s an electricity in the air.  Lou Bloom is a lonely guy who lives off of it. We don’t know much about Jake Gyllenhaal’s lonely Lou.  By the end credits, we still don’t know a heck of a lot about him – it’s exactly the point. The film’s title very much fits Bloom’s personality as someone who…