By: Addison Wylie Considering the talent involved, it’s hard to believe everyone agreed to star in a film this goofy and shallow. Especially, by actors like Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, and Josh Brolin who have recently been very selective about their work. Gangster Squad appears to have done its homework considering its 1940’s backdrop. Its attractive period style, make-up and costuming convince us the film will have more weight to it since more effort is…
By: Addison Wylie In terms of being a worthwhile cop drama, McCanick won’t astound movie goers, but it certainly does the trick. The problem with McCanick is that it has a really hard time trying to escape the shadow of other more successful cop dramas like Training Day and more recent middle-of-the-road fare brought to us by Antoine Fuqua. Josh C. Waller’s film allows David Morse to take a break from being a quirky supporting character…
By: Addison Wylie Once upon a time in a high school drama master class, a group of friends and I were given a one-act play to perform for our final exam. The play was Anton Chekov’s The Proposal. Myself and my other cast mates had no clue what to make of the exaggerated work or of our bumbling characters ; and, our director didn’t know any better. We agreed that the amount of time given…
By: Addison Wylie I see V/H/S/2 as a sign that these bruised and battered anthology pieces could become something very exciting. The series started on a raw note with V/H/S. An extremely raw note. The set-up that a group of ruff-and-tuff thugs start dying from watching mysterious found footage located in a skeezy house was a bit too vague to go off on. It didn’t help that the acting by those random criminals all felt forced….
By: Addison Wylie If you can bear with Don Jon’s vulgar vocabulary, you may find yourself swept up in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut. It’s a modern day romance with just the right dash of sweet and salty. Gordon-Levitt plays the title character, a guido with a heart who loves to spend time with his boys, work out, and scope out chicks. At the end of the day, he likes to come home and watch a…
By: Addison Wylie Taking a break from his independent fare, filmmaker David Gordon Green got familiar with the Apatow brat pack – launching him to direct the uneven but oddly memorable Pineapple Express. His directorial hand was embraced and pushed him down a path helming louder movies like Your Highness and The Sitter, two off-putting crudities that aren’t worthy of Green’s time and talent. With Prince Avalanche, it feels as if Green is making the…
By: Addison Wylie With intensity comes pressure, and with pressure comes fear. Tobias Lindholm’s A Hijacking has all of the above. Lindholm’s excellent film is shot and edited as a docudrama and often reminded me of Paul Greengrass’ United 93 regarding how it treats its audience as flies on the wall. But where United 93 was based on a real life tragic event, A Hijacking’s story isn’t directly based on a true story but still…
By: Addison Wylie The image of the feeble pirogue (the film’s featured boat) floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is a perfect metaphor to describe my abandoned interest towards Moussa Touré’s drama La Pirogue. I wanted to like Touré’s film. A title card leading to the end credits dedicating the film to those who have made the trek – and may have died – from Africa to Europe to seek a better life…
By: Addison Wylie This year’s first “save the President” action yarn, Olympus Has Fallen, is a D movie trying to fill B movie shoes. It’s a movie that should buckle audiences in for ecstatic escapist entertainment. Unfortunately, it’s trying too hard to have its cake and eat it too by becoming too emotionally involved. We’ve all seen mindless action flicks that centre around a terrorist attack. We may have also seen one of these action films…
By: Addison Wylie I can only write a review for Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight with a biased opinion. Not only am I a fan of Linklater’s two previous acquaintances with romantics Jesse and Céline (both played wonderfully by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), but I’m also someone who fell head over heels for someone lovely who soon became my wife, and we proceed to take long walks and ramble until we forget where we were…