By: Addison Wylie Patch Town is royally ambitious. It’s also incredibly hard to synopsize making it harder to recommend despite it being a highly enjoyable live-action fairy tale. Craig Goodwill, a filmmaker who’s been comfortable making short films, expanded on his original short Patch Town and adapted it into a real nifty feature. He’s drawn on David Lynch’s Eraserhead to define the film’s industrial dystopia where obedient workers withdrawal babies from heads of cabbage. All…
By: Addison Wylie As someone who is a follower of Sesame Street’s history and a fan of Caroll Spinney, I feel I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story was speaking directly to me and other admirers who may fall in the same categories as I do. Kids may connect with Spinney’s Big Bird, but Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker’s documentary is meant to click with those who grew up with the child-like muppet; as…
By: Addison Wylie Movies like Debug make me wish I had a notebook handy during screenings. I feel overwhelmed trying to remember all of the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo that fills David Hewlett’s futuristic space horror. Let’s just say Hewlett’s self-penned script has expiatory dialoguing of the laziest kind. Science fiction often hosts the worst scenarios since some filmmakers just want to hurl a bunch of technical nonsense towards the audience and expect movie goers will be…
By: Trevor Jeffery Using the words “unabashed” and “propaganda” together seems redundant, but there isn’t a better way to describe James McTeigue’s Survivor. Kate Abbott (Mila Jovovich) is an officer with the US embassy in London. While on duty, Kate asks a few too many questions to a man she suspects to be (and actually is) a bio-terrorist, before letting him through customs. This sets him and his associates into freak-out mode, and they hire an…
By: Addison Wylie Early on in Results, two workout trainers are telling the other not to provoke them. These two trainers are Trevor and Kat, played by Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders. Over the course of Andrew Bujalski’s film, the audience finds out that these two characters need to be provoked in order for them to be challenged, which in turn makes Results interesting. The person who does most of the poking and prodding is…
By: Addison Wylie Vampires and the mockumentary genre have both been exhausted thanks to current fads, and spoofing these horrific bloodsuckers has also been done before. Yet, What We Do in the Shadow is one of the funniest films of the year. How so? Filmmaker Taika Waititi and comedic actor Jemaine Clement use inventive intelligence to ingeniously breathe life into these seemingly overplayed areas. There are various forms of comedy, but it’s always helpful when…
By: Trevor Jeffery Kristen Wiig should keep doing her thing, because it’s definitely working for her, and Welcome to Me shows it. Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me introduces itself masterfully: five minutes in and you know Alice Klieg (Wiig), her recently-unmedicated illness, and you have a good idea of how her life up to now has been. And, how someone like her winning $86 million can have negative consequences. Alice throws money around like most…
By: Addison Wylie Legendary animator and filmmaker Bill Plympton explores the human condition to hurt what we love in his latest poignant piece, Cheatin’. It’s full of emotional fervour and sensitivity while coming equipped with the filmmaker’s signature brand of off-beat humour. It all starts at a carnival during an amusing, scary bumper car ride – of course, it does. Ella is gawked at by the fair’s male population, and is seen as an obvious…
By: Addison Wylie Fashion icon Iris Apfel has such wonderment, such humbling intellect, and such bewildered enthusiasm. She’s firm, but looks at her fame as dazed and unfazed. Her presence is infectious, and in Albert Maysles’ documentary Iris, she helps raise the film to another level. Without her, the audience would be stuck with Maysles’ cut-and-dry traditional filmmaking. Movie goers are taken through Apfel’s influential history, and observe her optimism when others appreciate her opinion….
By: Addison Wylie Drafthouse Films’ track record is uneven, but you have to give them credit for being able to uncover bizarrely profound work. As for their current experiment, they’re giving Roar – an outrageously irresponsible survival film – a second chance. Knowing the production company, they see cult potential in Noel Marshall’s dangerous film. Roar was littered with problems during production including multiple injuries to the cast and crew, as well as natural disasters…