By: Jessica Goddard Despite its inexplicable first-rate cast, Blackbird is an eye-rollingly disappointing take on the terminal illness drama from director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, My Cousin Rachel). Screenwriter Christian Torpe paints with a bland palette of stock characters to slap together a narrative infested with clichés and unnatural one-liners, leading nowhere of interest.
By: Jessica Goddard Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel is colourful, melodramatic, deliciously tacky cinematic theatre driven by an intriguing premise and infused with refreshing nostalgia. It’s visually delightful, and the quirky setting and quirkier characters sustain curiosity even if those characters don’t feel totally real.
The Divergent film series – based on the Young Adult trilogy by Veronica Roth – immediately felt like a cash-in on the success of The Hunger Games film franchise. Divergent is painful in its complexity: set in a typical YA post-apocalyptic future, Tris (Shailene Woodley) must navigate the walled city of Chicago, where factions are systemized by certain characteristics – Erudite is made up of the intelligentsia, Dauntless are warriors, etc. Initiates take a test…
By: Addison Wylie Movie 43 is an anthology film with a stacked cast. It’s been pushing its alleged “audacity” and “outrageousness” in order to get YOU in that theatre seat. However, there is something to be said about how much the marketing has pushed that angle in our faces. When a movie is urging moviegoers to focus on an element about the movie (in this case, its sheer outlandishness) instead of the actual movie itself…