By: Addison Wylie Alan Zweig won top honours at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September for his documentary filmmaking with When Jews Were Funny – but, I needed more convincing. When Jews Were Funny – a doc on how a Judaic approach to comedy made its way into our funny bones – had appropriate subjects to interview, a proper conversational vibe about it, but its scope was too narrow. Zweig didn’t have enough…
By: Addison Wylie Is Parkland respectful towards its source material and depiction of the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Yes. Is it accurate to its time period? Sure is. Are the performances worthwhile? You betcha. However, even though Peter Landesman’s film has plenty of good things going for it, I felt detached from the movie most of time. I couldn’t fully invest my feelings into it, which is troublesome seeing as the film is an…
By: Addison Wylie What do I say about The Dirties? A film that shook me up and has hung around with me days after I’ve seen it. Matt Johnson’s courageous and ambitious feature film debut is a tough film to recommend to a wide audience because of its timely, controversial material handled with a sense of humour. You definitely have to be in a specific mood for its darker approach to school shootings and the…
The Newton Brothers have ears for music and a drive like no other. Not only has the duo – who is made up by Andy Grush (right) and Taylor Stewart (left) – dabbled in many different genres, but the pair have taken on a hefty load producing musical scores for seven films in eight months. Grush and Stewart attended TIFF earlier this month to support three films they were apart of. Oculus directed by Mike…
By: Addison Wylie The World’s End, the last outing in Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, yet again pairs the filmmaker up with actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to tell a tale of everyday men in monstrous peril. This time, Pegg and Frost play former friends who had a falling out between their teenage years and adulthood. Gary King (played by Pegg) hasn’t given up living the high life of booze and babes. Meanwhile,…
Well, now that TIFF has come to an end, let’s take a trip back to August. If you can believe it, August was busier than my experience with the Toronto International Film Festival. At Film Army, I was checking out different programmes hosted by Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, watching smaller independent fare, as well as getting ready for TIFF while setting up IFFFT coverage – the International Fetish Film Festival Toronto. It’s great to cover…
By: Addison Wylie Kevin MacDonald’s adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s novel How I Live Now is a bit of a struggle for movie goers trying to figure out what type of movie this is. Mostly because How I Live Now has two sets of confusion working for and against it. MacDonald begins his film on an aggressive note to mirror the personality of our lead, Daisy (played by Saoirse Ronan). While it fulfils its goal, the rebellious…
By: Addison Wylie Some would say talk-show host Morton Downey Jr. was a smart man. Others would comment but they may be too busy plugging their ears from his ranting and raving. Movie goers can see that filmmakers Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger easily fall into the former category. With their new doc Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, the trio starts from Morton’s early years – where he was known as…
Everyone has a list of things they want to do. These things aren’t towering milestones that are waiting to be crossed off a bucket list, but their big enough to constantly hang out in your head and remind you that you’ve been wanting to accomplish whatever you wanted to do. It seems I usually have a list like this for every month, but July seemed to be that month where I finally was able to…
By: Addison Wylie Upon seeing Jobs, the Ashton Kutcher led biopic about late visionary and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, I was interested to see how a spoof would be handled in the future given how much material Joshua Michael Stern’s film unintentionally supplies. However, the jokers at Funny or Die have jumped the gun and created the satire before Jobs was made – earning it the title of “the first Steve Jobs movie”. Don’t worry…