By: Addison Wylie The good news: Joshua Michael Stern’s biopic Jobs never feels inappropriate or tasteless. It hardly feels as if the film was made with ill-advised intentions or to meet a strict relevancy deadline. However, I can see a large portion of the movie going public leaving the theatre at the end wishing there was more to Stern’s film chronicling the life and times of the late inventor and Apple guru Steve Jobs. Jobs…
By: Addison Wylie This year’s first “save the President” action yarn, Olympus Has Fallen, is a D movie trying to fill B movie shoes. It’s a movie that should buckle audiences in for ecstatic escapist entertainment. Unfortunately, it’s trying too hard to have its cake and eat it too by becoming too emotionally involved. We’ve all seen mindless action flicks that centre around a terrorist attack. We may have also seen one of these action films…
By: Addison Wylie I can only write a review for Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight with a biased opinion. Not only am I a fan of Linklater’s two previous acquaintances with romantics Jesse and Céline (both played wonderfully by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), but I’m also someone who fell head over heels for someone lovely who soon became my wife, and we proceed to take long walks and ramble until we forget where we were…
By: Addison Wylie Upon seeing Jobs, the Ashton Kutcher led biopic about late visionary and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, I was interested to see how a spoof would be handled in the future given how much material Joshua Michael Stern’s film unintentionally supplies. However, the jokers at Funny or Die have jumped the gun and created the satire before Jobs was made – earning it the title of “the first Steve Jobs movie”. Don’t worry…
By: Addison Wylie Unique. That’s the word I’d use to describe Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, an utterly ambitious film about a competition featuring duelling men (and a woman) and their computers as they square off in a round robin of chess. Bujalski is ambitious in the way that he’s trying to make an entertaining movie about nerdy technicians and their comprehension of chess and their machines. But also, because he’s shot his film using Sony…
By: Addison Wylie Dominga Sotomayor Castillo has been collecting accolades for her directorial debut Thursday Till Sunday. Her young female lead – 11 year old Santi Ahumada – has also been earning her fair share of praise for her innocent performance. However, I regret to inform Castillo and Ahumada that they won’t be earning any applause on the Wylie Writes front because Castillo’s filmmaking has serious issues and Ahumada’s performance – following similar footsteps as last year’s…
By: Addison Wylie My disappointment with The Conjuring isn’t caused by oodles of pre-release buzz, but because I know director James Wan can do so much better. Wan, who I consider a modern day master of horror, knows the genre well. He’s able to build tension and isn’t afraid to milk a quiet situation for all that it’s worth. He knows exactly how long to hold the viewers’ anticipation and how far to drag them…
By: Addison Wylie Nat Faxon (who you may have seen playing bit parts in Broken Lizard films and playing the title male on the unfortunately short lived TV show Ben & Kate) and Jim Rash (who you may have caught on the cult television hit Community) have Academy Awards under their belts. Their screenwriting, along with Alexander Payne penmanship, earned all three of them a prestigious Oscar for their adaptive screenwriting in The Descendants. Now,…
By: Addison Wylie In the span of a month, Toronto has gotten two independent films that feature exotic locations starring a cast member of Degrassi: The Next Generation. While they’re both badly made, Adriarico My Love is not the worst out of the two. That dishonour still goes to Dev Khanna’s Fondi ’91. However, Nikola Curcin’s peculiar film is a shabby endeavour and just about the strangest film you’ll see this Summer – and, not…
By: Addison Wylie It’s generally known that a sweet-and-salty combo more than likely delivers successful results. While Superman’s latest origin story Man of Steel has problems, the sweet-and-salty pairing of director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan (with Nolan’s Batman screenwriter David S. Goyer penning this script as well) entices movie goers and the results pull mesmerized, giddy audiences to the edge of our seats. Snyder is no stranger to graphic novels and superheroes. Unfortunately,…