By: Addison Wylie Taking a break from his independent fare, filmmaker David Gordon Green got familiar with the Apatow brat pack – launching him to direct the uneven but oddly memorable Pineapple Express. His directorial hand was embraced and pushed him down a path helming louder movies like Your Highness and The Sitter, two off-putting crudities that aren’t worthy of Green’s time and talent. With Prince Avalanche, it feels as if Green is making the…
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 Noah Baumbach’s most uplifting film to date (which is a major step up when comparing his latest to his last effort – the overly cynical and absolutely annoying Greenberg) has an almost immediately disarming look and feel to it. Taking on the aesthetics of a first or second year student thesis project, the black-and-white dramedy feels normal once we can identify what Baumbach’s movie resembles – leading us to focus on what…
By: Addison Wylie I would love to see what writer/director Judd Apatow could do with a film that punches out after 90 minutes – including credits. This Is 40 starts out strong and funny, but is then torpedoed by needless subplots that are tediously stretched out causing the runtime to slowly expand. Apatow has shown with his previous directorial work that he loves to let his material breathe. Not in a pretentious way, but in…
By: Addison Wylie LOL, a film starring Miley Cyrus directed by Lisa Azuelos, is wildly inconsistent. It’s consistently inconsistent. I didn’t think such a thing would be possible. But, what’s even more confusing, is how badly Azuelos has dropped the ball. LOL is the North American remake of a French film she made earlier in her career called LOL (Laughing Out Loud). Having not seen the original and only reading the plot synopsis online, LOL…