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July 2018

Reviews

Generation Wealth

Inspired by her catalogue of photography and her award-winning documentary The Queen of Versailles, Lauren Greenfield set off to encapsulate global obsessions of self-value in her latest doc Generation Wealth.  However, if you ask me, Generation Wealth has not only been inspired by Greenfield’s career and questions about society, but also by various unfinished stories seeking closure.

Reviews

Shock and Awe

Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Jessica Biel, Milla Jovovich, Rob Reiner, and Tommy Lee Jones.  These actors all play key parts in Shock and Awe, a political drama Reiner directs.  Unfortunately, they’re all overqualified for this generic vehicle.

Festival Coverage

Wylie Writes @ TIFF ’18

TIFF returns for another year, pushed along by their Tuesday announcement of gala and special presentation films.  This first slate has the same level of films that frequently find their way into the earliest announcement: films that will eventually be nominated for Oscars, or be ignored for Oscars, or find their way into hot take articles about how they should have been nominated for Oscars.

Reviews

Our House

Our House graduates from the “Paranormal Activity Institute of Small and Effectual Scares”.  Actually, if we’re rating this supernatural horror against the Paranormal Activity series, it’s on par with the first two films, and ranks higher than the franchise’s final two chapters.  For what it’s worth, that’s a decent sweet spot for Anthony Scott Burns and his feature-length debut.

Reviews

Future World

For as rambunctious as Future World is, it’s awfully dull.  This disappointing joint effort comes from directors Bruce Thierry Cheung and James Franco, although considering how successful Franco has been as a director, I wonder if he was hired to guide Cheung.  Nonetheless, both filmmakers fail at establishing this tattered reality, which falls somewhere between a hellscape and a subsisting rebirth.  The survivors also seem to be an uneven mix of copied characters from other movies.

Reviews

Eighth Grade

By: Jessica Goddard A film as heartbreaking as it is necessary, Bo Burnham’s feature directorial debut Eighth Grade earnestly tackles the varied intricacies of growing up in the age of smartphones, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Reviews

Broken Star

The central character in Dave Schwep’s Broken Star is a young actress fallen from grace: a drug-addicted, manipulative monster.  Markey Marlowe (Crazy, Stupid, Love’s Analeigh Tipton) – a character and name that sounds like it’s come right out of a 1940s film noir – is placed on house arrest, with her only company being reclusive landlord Daryl (Tyler Labine of Mountain Men), whose grandmother has recently passed away.  Over time, Marlowe manipulates Daryl into attacking those…

Reviews

Filmworker

Stanley Kubrick was a peculiar anomaly.  He was a world famous filmmaker with a classic catalogue, yet he lived an elusive life.  Allegedly, it was rare to be granted access into Kubrick’s personal life, and it was more rare to find someone who would be willing to put themselves that close to him considering Kubrick’s infamous reputation.