By: Addison Wylie Let’s not beat around the bush: the most comparable film you can mention when talking about Kyle Rankin’s Night of the Living Deb is Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. Both Shaun and Deb are underdogs dealing with a zombie outbreak on the fly while trying to figure out their own issues with romance. The strongest thing you can say about Rankin’s horror/comedy is that while Night of the Living Deb is…
By: Addison Wylie I don’t regret liking HBO’s Entourage even though Doug Ellin’s cinematic continuation of the hit TV series stinks. The television show offered a sleek albeit heightened look into the politics and smooth-talkers behind Hollywood. Actor Vincent Chase was a lucrative asset to any major motion picture, and his friends witnessed this as they tagged along for the ride. Frequently vulgar and overtly macho, Entourage was amusing escapism that made filmdom look and…
By: Addison Wylie Toronto Youth Shorts’ T24 challenges filmmakers to create, finish, and submit a short film to the festival’s committee within 24-hours. Before heading out to plan their production, each team is given a page-long mission statement for the challenge documenting the themes that their works should fulfill. This year, festival director Henry Wong and his team were inspired by recent, humbling articles complimenting the GTA. The Toronto Youth Shorts committee state the long and…
By: Addison Wylie “Have you ever exceeded the limits of pain?” Now, I have. When Your Flesh Screams is in need of more lighting, more rewrites, more experienced actors, and more time in an edit bay. Most of all, Guillermo Martínez’s low-rent ode to exploitation-horror is in need of someone to show it the door. This is a film made by people who have seen raw works like Last House on the Left and are only interested in the…
By: Addison Wylie We’ve all seen some variation of “crazy” in supermarket tabloids and on afternoon television programming, but Finders Keepers looks past what some would define as “too wild to be true” and finds the humanity behind the headlines. That’s not to say the story this documentary follows isn’t wacky – it absolutely is. In what could only be described as fate, John Wood and Shannon Whisnant were brought together after Whisnant found Wood’s…
By: Addison Wylie New Yorkers must’ve sensed something was up when the Big Apple was suddenly populated by topless female protesters. Then, celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Lena Dunham were throwing their support behind trending hashtag #FreeTheNipple. Something was definitely up. Alas, it was all for Lina Esco’s movie Free the Nipple and the empowering mission supporting it. Esco and various other activists seen in Free the Nipple feel very passionately about inequality…
By: Addison Wylie I go out of my way to see faith-based movies – I’m oddly obsessed with them. Not because of the beliefs and not necessarily for the theatregoing experience itself, but because for two-hours, I get a glimpse into a whole other world. A world where prayer can be described as the only reliable resource and be discussed as a way to salvation, and problems can be solved by asking the lord for…
By: Addison Wylie The Stanford Prison Experiment is fascinating as it is disturbing. It’s too bad such an inhumane procedure had to take place in real life in order for us to receive this excellent and provocative dramatization. Stanford’s Dr. Philip Zimbardo took a leap of faith when designing an experiment which positioned 18 young men as guards and prisoners in a makeshift jail located in the basement of the university’s Jordan Hall. The two-week long…
By: Addison Wylie Veteran actor Bruce Greenwood and budding actress Ella Purnell are two performers who benefit the most from Frank Hall Green’s weak drama Wildlike. Purnell plays fragile teenager Mackenzie who has been taken advantage of, and in turn can’t trust anyone. Greenwood plays heartbroken wanderer Rene who hopes for a future of clarity and eventual happiness. When Purnell and Greenwood are together, their chemistry is suitably akin to oil and water, but they’re both convincing in their own right. Unfortunately, despite reccomending Wildlike’s…
Actor/comedian Vic Cohen is a great interviewee. He’s not only candid, but he also has an impressive ability to give straightforward answers whilst sticking to his brand of comedy. When I heard he was starring in David Spade’s new prank TV show Fameless (now airing on TruTV), Wylie Writes was willing to bend film-faithful guidelines to talk shop with Vic. You may have seen Cohen on various hidden camera television shows (Howie Do It, Mobbed). If you’re…