By: Addison Wylie I went into The Sheepdogs Have At It with interested, persuasive ears. I had heard some of the band’s work and liked it, but never found myself yearning to find out more about the band members themselves. I would take the music at face value and soak in the nostalgia that lined the tracks. The Sheepdogs Have At It offered insights here and there regarding how the band got started and how…
By: Addison Wylie The MPAA has given the latest instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise a PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality, and language”. From the sounds of that, Fast & Furious 6 should be a wild time at the movies. So, why was I so bored? Whether you walked away from Fast Five liking it or not, you at least could’ve left the theatre with some…
By: Addison Wylie The apocalyptic comedy This Is The End is a pretty good directorial debut from screenwriters/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and on top of that, it’s pretty funny. More notably, it’s just about the closest thing North American cinema will get to emulating the meta movies of UK filmmaker Michael Winterbottom – for now Winterbottom has made popular films featuring actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Their…
By: Addison Wylie If Goran Kalezic’s film was conceived a few years earlier, I’m certain Larry the Cable Guy would’ve played Victor Altomare’s leading role. The Great Chameleon has all those traits one would find in the comic’s low-brow outings – including a cast made up of fairly familiar and puzzled faces as well as cringe-worthy politically incorrectness trying to pass as humour. I think my passiveness towards poorly written, brash racial stereotypes in recent…
By: Addison Wylie I hate Birdemic: Shock and Terror. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Where most midnight movie lovers embraced its incompetent “so bad, it’s good” charm, I found it to be furiously annoying and “so bad, it’s bad”. How anyone thought that Birdemic: Shock and Terror was releasable is beyond me. You would think director/screenwriter James Nguyen must’ve had that thought cross his mind between takes of his actors swinging…
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 As the Hangover series comes to a close, it’s wild to look back on the three successful comedies and reflect on how a jaw-dropping sleeper hit eventually became a three-part franchise that has split audiences – especially the second installment which many called “too dark” and “a complete rip-off of the original”. As for myself, I’ve enjoyed where this series has gone and am one of the few who appreciates the The Hangover…
By: Addison Wylie A great deal of unease works in filmmaker Cate Shortland’s favour. Her dramatic period piece Lore always feels restless. Characters – young and old – are constantly looking for stability and safety and the environments are always changing. That’s not to hint that Lore is inconsistent with a short attention span. It’s a compliment that Shortland has found the perfect unsettling tone to allow all her elements to work on. Lore shows…
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 There are short films that get wrapped up in their own mysterious styles and murky vagueness, and then there’s Jeremiah Kipp’s The Days God Slept. Kipp’s short film skates awfully close to being just another brick in the surrealistic wall but its consistency to its characters and story is what saves it, making it a memorable watch. The Days God Slept gives the power to the audience to assume the context of…