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The Yes Men Are Revolting

July 10, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Trevor Jeffery The Yes Men Are Revolting is something like reality prank drama meets comedic character documentary, with social justice slathered through out. Back for their third documentary, cultural activist conmen Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (stage names for Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, respectively) stick it to the man by pretending to be the man and raising awareness through fake press conferences and publicity stunts.  The Yes Men hit climate change hard, and…

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Going In and Coming Out: Self/Less

July 9, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Anthony King GOING IN: There are a lot of films out there that help us escape our lives and live out a fantasy.  For men in particular, some want to be an international spy who always gets the lady, an astronaut exploring the galaxy, a mobster in a fancy suit tossing out the kiss of death left and right… or some of us just want to be able to discard our gross bodies and be…

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Tangerine

July 7, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie Jay and Mark Duplass hopped on board Sean Baker’s Tangerine to lend their support as executive producers.  The mumblecore founders are always keeping their eyes peeled for innovation in independent cinema, and Tangerine – a film shot entirely on the iPhone 5S – was their calling. Tangerine reminded me of Christos Sourligas’ Happy Slapping, a film that followed hopeless teens via handheld footage shot on earlier generation smartphones.  Happy Slapping may have more interesting things to…

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It Follows

July 6, 2015Addison Wylie2 Comments

By: Addison Wylie Ambiguity can be a beautiful thing – especially for the horror genre.  Filmmakers can inject an idea, and then trust the viewers to fill in the blanks.  It does, however, take a certain skill and direction to utilize ambiguity to its fullest degree.  A skill that David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is missing although the film is confident it has. It Follows goes heavy on creepy nuances, which benefits the experience.  Nothing…

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She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

July 3, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie Mary Dore’s She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a solid film, and joins the ranks of other docs that remind us of how unbalanced the past was through.  The documentation stuns and embarrasses, but Dore sticks with professionalism and avoids turning her film into a shame project. Dore reinforces the power of communication in critical times.  Before feminism was taken seriously, women who felt discriminated were often ignored.  A female character type was established…

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Assassin

June 30, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie The vaguely titled Assassin has the ability to be cool, but instead settles on being “cool”. There are cool shots of hitman Jamie (played by Danny Dyer) on his motorcycle as he zips to a hired job and zooms off to collect his earnings, and I quite like what filmmaker J.K. Amalou can do with the correct lighting.  Then, there are those “cool” moments where popular songs ineffectively crash into a scene while…

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The Overnight

June 26, 2015Addison Wylie3 Comments

By: Shannon Page In a lot of ways, Patrick Brice’s The Overnight is a very rare film.  With a small cast and fairly straightforward plot (the entire movie was shot in only twelve days), The Overnight is a sex-comedy about parenthood and relationships that avoids the usual clichéd pit falls. When thirty-something parents Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) move to L.A. and are eager to meet new friends, they jump at a dinner…

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Eden

June 25, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Trevor Jeffery If you walk in to Eden with little understanding of electronic dance music (EDM), there won’t be much of an issue because you’ll be left feeling about the same as when the movie started. In 1992’s version of Paris, teenager Paul Vallée (Félix de Givry) sits in the woods as he hallucinates on some sort of rave drug.  Over the next 20 years, Paul will: start a EDM duo who brings in…

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The Little Death

June 24, 2015Addison Wylie0 Comments

By: Addison Wylie You’ve got to hand it to Josh Lawson.  He quickly informs movie goers of his invisible boundaries in his dark comedy The Little Death.  There’s no second guessing.  The problem is he sets the tone with a sour scene starring a belle, her beau, and her rape fantasy proposal. The Little Death prominently displays sexual fetishes – some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t heard of, some you wish you never heard of…

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Reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey

June 23, 2015Addison Wylie1 Comment

By: Addison Wylie I didn’t think it was possible for a film to be spoofed, and then be turned back into the po-faced material the parody was making fun of – then, I saw Fifty Shades of Grey.  The movie feels like someone picking up the pieces to a dated romance, and trying to glue them back together to make something even more manipulative.  Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film is so misinformed and shallow, you would think the filmmaker was making…

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