Sexploitation cinema’s latest entry Gone by Dawn boasts bare bodies as if its already waving down Mr. Skin for a year-end top prize in nudity. However, don’t be fooled by this skin flick. Even though the film prides itself on sex appeal, there’s something more meaningful underneath it all.
By: Addison Wylie New Yorkers must’ve sensed something was up when the Big Apple was suddenly populated by topless female protesters. Then, celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Lena Dunham were throwing their support behind trending hashtag #FreeTheNipple. Something was definitely up. Alas, it was all for Lina Esco’s movie Free the Nipple and the empowering mission supporting it. Esco and various other activists seen in Free the Nipple feel very passionately about inequality…
By: Mark Barber Love is about reconciling romance with sex; something its director, French provocateur Gaspar Noé, and the film’s main protagonist, Murphy (Karl Glusman), agree on. Whether or not Noé is successful in marrying romance and sex (and whether they are even really that diametrically opposed outside of some conceptions of pornography) doesn’t matter. Love faults in so many other ways, it’s easy to ignore its ambition. Love tells the story of the turbulent…
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is fast approaching, which means it’s time to check out some of the docs that will be playing this year. The festival has been known to feature a variety of different work capturing all sorts of subjects and world events. There’s simply no other festival like it, which explains why it’s become the largest film festival for docs in North America. Hot Docs is one of my favourite festivals…
By: Addison Wylie In Bad Johnson, heartthrob Cam Gigandet plays Rich, a womanizing jackass who finds himself in predicaments when pleasing his manly needs. He cheats on girlfriends, checks out T&A, and forgets women he’s gone to bed with. According to the film, some of this is charming – usually when Gigandet is smirking and trying to woo. Alas, Rich’s mojo becomes too much of a burden. In frustration, he wishes away his penis. The…
By: Addison Wylie I appreciate Academy Award nominee Mark Mori wanting to “reveal all” about pinup model Bettie Page with his new doc literally titled Bettie Page Reveals All, but I feel as if he may have gone too far right out of the gate. The documentary gives viewers a confidential look into Page’s life whilst using vintage privy interview answers from the model herself to string along narration. The documentary’s structure could – and…
By: Addison Wylie The realism in Stranger by the Lake (or, L’Inconnu du lac) is what initially draws audiences in. It’s paced deliberately slow to match life’s sunny tranquilities, and the cruising men who attend this private beach looking for a getaway and the occasional hook up come across as real people. Stranger by the Lake is uneventful for the most part, but its serenely baked atmosphere is musing. Once a dangerous dramatic turn comes into play, that…
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 Spring Breakers works in more ways than one. First of all, you can take Harmony Korine’s film at face value and perceive it as a lurid fever dream with a loose story integrating elements of the crime genre with a trippy punk rock attitude. The four roles played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Korine’s wife Rachel Korine are charismatic enough in an entertaining train wreck sort of way as…