When you watch Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, a new buddy comedy written and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, you start associating other movies with it. “This is Kristen Wiig’s Austin Powers”, “This is Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s take on A Night at the Roxbury”, “In fact, this is the best Saturday Night Live movie that never was an SNL skit in the first place!”. The viewer does this because…
The How to Train Your Dragon series receives a fulfilling finale with The Hidden World, a sensational sequel that not only ties its saga back to the creation of legendary stories, but also features the best visuals DreamWorks Animation has ever produced.
Despite its “battle-of-the-sexes” controversy, it was surprisingly easy to stay out of discussions pertaining to Paul Feig’s reinvented Ghostbusters. I had no interest in the film’s politics. It wasn’t because I had strong opinions – I was just indifferent.
Fourth Man Out (DIR. Andrew Nackman) By: Shannon Page In many ways, director Andrew Nackman’s first feature length film is a typical “bro comedy”. The central characters are a group of blue-collar men who have been friends since childhood it, and the film emphasizes the value of male friendships. Fourth Man Out focuses on a small-town car mechanic named Adam (Evan Todd) who decides on his twenty-fourth birthday to come out as gay to his three…
By: Trevor Jeffery Kristen Wiig should keep doing her thing, because it’s definitely working for her, and Welcome to Me shows it. Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me introduces itself masterfully: five minutes in and you know Alice Klieg (Wiig), her recently-unmedicated illness, and you have a good idea of how her life up to now has been. And, how someone like her winning $86 million can have negative consequences. Alice throws money around like most…
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…
By: Addison Wylie When a family favourite reaches for a sequel, the franchise has to be careful it doesn’t catch a case of contagious sequelitis. For the much anticipated second part of the How to Train Your Dragon series, I’m happy to report that this latest adventure only suffers from slight sniffles. Otherwise, this is the follow-up that the 2010 hit deserves. We’re reunited with Hiccup (voiced by Jay Barachel) and his colourfully named pals…