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Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ Inside Out 2014: The Impostors in a Sham

May 31, 2014Addison Wylie0 Comments

An Evening with the Impostors (DIR. Raymond Helkio) By: Addison Wylie Filmmaker Raymond Helkio takes a day-in-the-life approach and applies it to the Impostors, an all male performance group where the talent impersonate female celebrities.  Beyoncé, Aretha Franklin, and Cher are among the names in their roster.  We follow the gang as they travel to Port Hope for their largest venue yet – the Captiol Theatre. While the performers remain professional with oodles of charisma, they…

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Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ Inside Out 2014: Experimental/Egotistical

May 25, 2014Addison Wylie1 Comment

Masculinity/Femininity (DIR. Russell Sheaffer) By: Addison Wylie It’s so limited, but it interrupts the whole filmmaking process.  It’s not a steady stream of consciousness as much as some of the performers would like it to be.  It kind of breaks it up. That’s a quote from someone describing super 8 film in Masculinity/Femininity.  A format of film so cumbersome, it would take an ambitious individual to want to shoot on it to make a modern movie….

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Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ Hot Docs 2014: Help Me, Help You

April 28, 2014Addison Wylie1 Comment

The theme of human connection has never been so prevalent.  The latest technology seems to be fastening people away from face-to-face interactions, and Spike Jonze’s Her made it clear as to what path the human race could possibly fall into. Filmmaker Tony Shaff has made a documentary that tries to follow suit. But, can he stick his landing? Hotline (DIR. Tony Shaff) By: Addison Wylie Hotline has an intriguing dynamic.  Tony Shaff’s documentary focuses on those conversations that…

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Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ Hot Docs 2014: A Different Type of Doc

April 23, 2014Addison Wylie0 Comments

To movie goers who may not be doc-savvy, they may instantly think a documentary has to be a film where talking heads flap away while being accompanied with relevant b-roll.  That’d be unfortunate because that’s not always the case. The Hot Docs International Documentary Festival tries to provide audiences with documentaries that set out to portray the genre from a different angle.  The festival does a solid job at providing plenty of examples. However, there are…

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Reviews

Alive Inside

April 1, 2014Addison Wylie3 Comments

By: Addison Wylie Alive Inside is a touching documentary that may have entered your life without you even knowing. A video circulated around the Internet featuring Henry, a mumbling man living with dementia who’s mind is expanded when he listens to music. His eyes bulge, he starts to move in his seat, and he can inspiredly recollect memories. This segment emotionally affected people across the globe, and it’s just one of the many moving moments…

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Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes at Hot Docs 2014

March 26, 2014Addison Wylie0 Comments

Out of all the festivals I’ve ever covered, the Hot Docs Film Festival is one of my favourites.  It’s a festival that always promises a deep array of different types of documentaries from a variety of different countries.  It’s very hard to find one doc that resembles another in Hot Docs. The press conference held at Toronto’s Bloor Hot Docs Theatre on March 18 certainly built the buzz well.  The audience had the pleasure of…

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Reviews

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2014: Saving Face

March 2, 2014Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie The Human Rights Watch Film Festival has made me exhale an astonished “wow” twice now.  That’s a compliment I haven’t admitted to in a while.  It’s absolutely true in the case of Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s harrowing doc Saving Face. The mighty film, which deservedly won 2012’s ‘Best Documentary Short’ Oscar, shows audiences how disturbingly frequent and heartbreakingly affective acid crimes are.  Every year, numerous Pakistani women are dosed with different forms of…

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Reviews

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2014: In the Shadow of the Sun

February 27, 2014Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie I find myself in a predicament trying to review Harry Freeland’s documentary In the Shadow of the Sun.  Prior to the film, I was oblivious to the subject matter and found myself perplexed by the harsh reality that stalks Tanzanian albinos. In the Shadow of the Sun is a perfectly fine documentary, but I keep feeling as if I’m rating Freeman’s doc on the content represented rather than the film the material…

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Reviews

TIFF Next Wave 2014: For No Eyes Only

February 14, 2014Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie Tali Barde’s feature film debut For No Eyes Only is set as a tense thriller adding a modern twist to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.  It doesn’t come through on being a thriller.  Instead, it’s accidentally profound. What I admired most about For No Eyes Only is Barde’s perceptual take on modern day voyeurism without being too on the nose.  Sam (a mopey loner played convincingly by newcomer Benedict Sieverding) suffers from a…

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Reviews

TIFF 2013: JGL Goes to GTD – Gym, Tan, Direct

September 1, 2013Addison Wylie5 Comments

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…

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