By: Addison Wylie The metric system has never been more sexy or sentimental than it is in Bent Hamer’s 1001 Grams. Now that I have your attention, let’s move towards some of the drier details. Marie (played by Ane Dahl Torp) is a Norwegian scientist who is close with her intellect father Ernst Ernst (played by Stein Winge). Both of their careers circulate around the analysis of measurements, and they both discuss work during their smoke…
By: Addison Wylie As an experiment and as an escape, Suzanne Crocker and her family packed up necessities (including a video camera) and took to Canada’s Yukon Territory for nine months. Suzanne and her husband Gerard Parsons wanted their children to experience the great outdoors and witness the change of the seasons; illustrating that technology and a fixed schedule doesn’t always capture what’s really going on in the world. The trip, however, was equally refreshing…
By: Mark Barber Current representations of Sherlock Holmes are filled with weighty world-threatening stakes and explosive action sequences. Bill Condon’s more peaceful and contemplative Mr. Holmes seeks to rectify that inclination, offering a more poignant take on the famous deerstalker-wearing detective. Indeed, Sherlock’s trademark cap never appears in the film, and for good reason. Mr. Holmes is about the interplay between fact and fiction, spending much of its running time reconciling the elderly Holmes’ (Ian…
By: Addison Wylie American gross-out comedies were so popular during the birth of the 2000s, Canadian cinema hopped on board. I vividly remember Mark Griffiths’ road trip flick Going the Distance and Dave Thomas’ workplace scrub clad comedy Intern Academy being released in 2004, and producing piddly groans. Canadian filmmakers are hitting another “monkey see, monkey do” phase as movie goers flock towards the comedic chops of Judd Apatow and his filmmaking protégés. Just like…
By: Addison Wylie With The Wedding Ringer, you get what you came for. But, just barely. It helps when you compare Jeremy Garelick’s film next to other recent R-rated comedies that take place around a wedding. It’s far better than That’s My Boy, and is narrowly beat out by What’s Your Number?. That’s a pretty pitiful way to look at things, but at this point, I’ll take whatever I can get. The Wedding Ringer also…
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…
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…
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…
Addison Wylie We’re halfway through the year, and I’m confident movies are “back on track”. 2014 had some admirable features, but it seemed like everyone collectively decided to focus on technical achievements. As far as award darlings are concerned, our minds have yet to be blown by this year’s selections. However, 2015 has given movie goers wonderful experiences. Killers made me feel queasy, but in a good way. Its story about two serial murderers was…
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…