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Articles by Wylie Writes Staff

Reviews

Soft

By: Trevor Chartrand Soft (which was featured in TIFF’s Discovery program last year) is a coming-of-age drama that, while captivating, can be difficult to watch – largely due to its meandering nature.

Reviews

ReBroken

By: Jeff Ching ReBroken is an ambitious and unique exploration of grief that qualifies as a thriller, drama, horror and a mystery.  It’s an unpredictable puzzle that the audience slowly pieces together.  But despite that selling point, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend Rebroken.  I will always applaud a filmmaker for taking risks over playing it safe.  However, I didn’t enjoy this experience, which could’ve been fixed had the film built an essential emotional connection to the material.

Reviews

Cram

By: Jeff Ching I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a horror movie more relatable than Abie Sidell’s Cram.  I also really don’t know if there will be a better horror movie this year.  Cram was made for nerds with severe procrastination issues.  Don’t get me wrong, if you’re one of those freaks that study for your exams a month in advance, watch this movie and understand the pain of being a procrastinator – this is in…

Reviews

Adult Adoption

By: Trevor Chartrand Quirky and surreal, Adult Adoption is the bizarrely unique directorial feature film debut from Karen Knox (star of Letters to Satan Claus).  The movie explores its characters with a delicate balance of intrusive empathy, and Knox’s filmmaking is executed in such an uncomfortable way that viewers may feel like they’re trespassing on the intimate details of a person’s private life.

Reviews

Cocaine Bear

By: Jeff Ching Walking into Cocaine Bear, I was expecting the movie to be the latest inductee to the “so bad, it’s good” list. Something along the lines of Snakes on a Plane or the Sharknado franchise: movies that are not good, but fun to laugh at.  Cocaine Bear, however, is not “so bad, it’s good” – it’s “so good, it’s umm….…the best movie of 2023 so far”. Look, it’s only late February, and I don’t expect…

Reviews

Cat Daddies

By: Trevor Chartrand Cat Daddies is a documentary about, you guessed it, men who own cats.  As someone with a career in the pet industry, and as a ‘Cat Daddy’ myself, I could safely assume I’m the target audience for Hye Hoang’s movie.  While I had high hopes for Cat Daddies to spin some riveting “tails” (eh? eh?!), this doc, unfortunately, is barely fur-deep.

Reviews

Marlowe

By: Jolie Featherstone Marlowe, Neil Jordan’s adaptation of John Banville’s (a.k.a. Benjamin Black) novel The Black-Eyed Blonde, brings Philip Marlowe (a character created by novelist Raymond Chandler) to life in a sunny noir set in a luscious, pre-WWII Californian town where everyone is trying to climb the ladder of success – no matter the cost.

Reviews

EO

By: Liam Parker Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, a 90% dialogue-free, Polish film whose protagonist is a donkey, is one of the most interesting films of 2022.  The movie, named after its donkey, centres itself on the melancholic ex-circus animal as he travels the continent of Europe;  witnessing the worst and best sides of human nature and chronicling a microcosm of modern European life along the way.

Reviews

Firenado

By: Trevor Chartrand With the title alone, Firenado makes its intentions (or lack of intentions, perhaps) clear right off the bat: this is not a movie to be taken seriously.  As if a film like this ever could be.  This flaming twister of a motion picture is a zero-effort waste of your time – in the most entertaining ways possible.