By: Addison Wylie Early on in Results, two workout trainers are telling the other not to provoke them. These two trainers are Trevor and Kat, played by Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders. Over the course of Andrew Bujalski’s film, the audience finds out that these two characters need to be provoked in order for them to be challenged, which in turn makes Results interesting. The person who does most of the poking and prodding is…
By: Addison Wylie Vampires and the mockumentary genre have both been exhausted thanks to current fads, and spoofing these horrific bloodsuckers has also been done before. Yet, What We Do in the Shadow is one of the funniest films of the year. How so? Filmmaker Taika Waititi and comedic actor Jemaine Clement use inventive intelligence to ingeniously breathe life into these seemingly overplayed areas. There are various forms of comedy, but it’s always helpful when…
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…
Everlasting Love (DIR. Marçal Forés) By: Addison Wylie Everlasting Love is a depressing time at the movies. It’s not scary, all the characters are unlikable, and it slowly shuffles to its grisly finale. With its familiar theme of cruising in an eerie world, I’m reminded of Stranger by the Lake. Though I didn’t particularly like Alain Guiraudie’s slow burn, his film has an edge on Everlasting Love. Stranger by the Lake had elements of conviction in a faceless…
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 Legendary animator and filmmaker Bill Plympton explores the human condition to hurt what we love in his latest poignant piece, Cheatin’. It’s full of emotional fervour and sensitivity while coming equipped with the filmmaker’s signature brand of off-beat humour. It all starts at a carnival during an amusing, scary bumper car ride – of course, it does. Ella is gawked at by the fair’s male population, and is seen as an obvious…
By: Shannon Page Paul Weitz’s Grandma manages to cover a lot of emotional territory in its short run-time without feeling rushed or over-reaching itself. Lily Tomlin plays lesbian poet Elle Reid who is still mourning the recent death of her life-partner Violet when her teenage granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), arrives at her door pregnant. Together, the two women embark on a day-long quest to find the money for Sage’s abortion. It has been twenty-seven years since…
By: Addison Wylie Mars Horodyski’s Ben’s at Home is a film you can’t help but root for. I’ve been cheering the movie on since I saw it at this year’s Canadian Film Festival, and was overjoyed to hear it won Best Feature as the festival was winding down. Besides its win at the Canadian Film Festival, Ben’s at Home has won all sorts of affection; which is very impressive considering how small scale the movie is. It’s a daunting…
By: Addison Wylie Fashion icon Iris Apfel has such wonderment, such humbling intellect, and such bewildered enthusiasm. She’s firm, but looks at her fame as dazed and unfazed. Her presence is infectious, and in Albert Maysles’ documentary Iris, she helps raise the film to another level. Without her, the audience would be stuck with Maysles’ cut-and-dry traditional filmmaking. Movie goers are taken through Apfel’s influential history, and observe her optimism when others appreciate her opinion….
By: Shannon Page It’s not exactly uncommon to find comedic actors who have made the transition, or at least attempted the transition, to more serious acting roles. Nick Kroll’s latest creation, the indie-comedy Adult Beginners, is an undeniably sharp departure from the character-based sketch comedy that the comedian’s fans have come to expect from his Comedy Central show, Kroll Show. Though it has its comic moments, Adult Beginners, which explores the relationship between two estranged…