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 Dominga Sotomayor Castillo has been collecting accolades for her directorial debut Thursday Till Sunday. Her young female lead – 11 year old Santi Ahumada – has also been earning her fair share of praise for her innocent performance. However, I regret to inform Castillo and Ahumada that they won’t be earning any applause on the Wylie Writes front because Castillo’s filmmaking has serious issues and Ahumada’s performance – following similar footsteps as last year’s…
By: Addison Wylie In the span of a month, Toronto has gotten two independent films that feature exotic locations starring a cast member of Degrassi: The Next Generation. While they’re both badly made, Adriarico My Love is not the worst out of the two. That dishonour still goes to Dev Khanna’s Fondi ’91. However, Nikola Curcin’s peculiar film is a shabby endeavour and just about the strangest film you’ll see this Summer – and, not…
For those who may be unaware, I also write on a more Canadian-savvy site called Film Army. At Film Army, contributors wish to bring filmmakers – ranging from students to up-and-comers to tenured artists – together and provide resources, news, and other relevant information in order to keep these dedicated readers in the loop regarding the film and television industry. Contributors have some sort of tv/film experience under our belts. Some have been working behind-the-scenes…
By: Addison Wylie After seeing Vince Offer’s appalling InAPPropriate Comedy and Seth Gordon’s despicable Identity Thief, I thought I’d be done using “the worst” to describe any other film released this year. That is, until I saw Dev Khanna’s Fondi ’91. Don’t get me wrong. Offer’s racist cinematic tirade and Gordon’s insufferable comedy are still the worst films 2013 has given audiences, but this crummy coming-of-age tale about a young man’s week long soccer getaway…
By: Addison Wylie If you think you know Divine, think again. At least, that was the thought swimming through my head as I discovered new information about the drag queen turned actor turned musician turned superstar. As a high school movie fanatic eager to watch anything and everything, I thought I had found the ultimate lost artifact when I picked up a copy of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. When I saw Divine’s Babs Johnson compete…
By: Addison Wylie It’s hard to find dislikable qualities in Poull Brien’s crowd pleaser Charles Bradley: Soul of America. Whether you attend a screening of the film because you like Bradley’s music, funk/blues music in general, or a good underdog story, Brien’s doc will have you leaving the theatre with a giant smile plastered to your face while you bob your head to the funky tunes streamlining through your cranium. The doc quickly lets movie…
By: Addison Wylie I haven’t seen it in a good long while, but I was surprised by Darren Stein’s 1999 dark comedy Jawbreaker. It brought that same guilty satisfaction you get when you eat peanut butter out of the container with a giant spoon. You shouldn’t be enjoying it, it’s probably bad for you, but you can’t stop soaking in the indulgence. Since Stein’s latest film G.B.F. deals with this same visual style and the…
By: Addison Wylie A tragically troublesome story involving a 14-year-old executing a fellow eighth grader by aiming and shooting a gun at their head during class seems about as open-and-shut as cases come. However, filmmaker Marta Cunningham explores the event from every angle to get every side of the story that she can in Valentine Road. It isn’t because she’s suspicious and smelling something fishy in the events leading up to this kill. As a…