By: Jessica Goddard Home Again is for Hollywood, by Hollywood, about Hollywood. If you can deal with that, you might enjoy this safe and well-meaning romantic comedy. Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s Home Again (a title which never ends up making any sense) is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s often endearing in a snort-and-smile kind of way.
By: Jessica Goddard Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name is a complex and highly nuanced coming-of-age story, packed with moving performances.
By: Jessica Goddard Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ is a fresh and energetic take on the “wannabe rapper” sub-sub-genre.
By: Jessica Goddard Bong Joon-ho’s Okja is not only packed with insight, imagination, and action, but mesmerizing visual effects. While this movie bounces around tonally, it’s consistently engaging and gripping. There are moments of camp and farce and exaggeration (cough cough – Jake Gyllenhaal – cough) but they are fun and mostly harmless. The premise is well-conceived, and the frequent use of subtitles under Korean dialogue is never fatiguing.
By: Jessica Goddard The Hero is a fine movie, but nothing particularly groundbreaking. Sam Elliott stars as the lonely, burnt-out actor Lee Hayden, who deals with his pancreatic cancer diagnosis by avoiding it completely. He spends his days smoking pot with his dealer (Nick Offerman) and standing at the ocean shoreline, brooding. His relationship with his daughter (Krysten Ritter) is awful because he was “always away”, and his life is completely devoid of romantic love…
We’re halfway through the year, which means it’s time for Wylie Writes’ recap of the best and the worst films of 2017. Don’t forget to click the coloured titles to read a more detailed write-up about the film!
By: Jessica Goddard Directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes), My Cousin Rachel is a mysterious, ambiguous, and appropriately moody adaption of the 1951 Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name.
By: Jessica Goddard If you were ever particularly curious about the founding and history of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), The Founders is an inviting and well executed documentary.
By: Jessica Goddard A movie packed with subtlety and nuance, Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women both wrenches the heart and flexes one’s critical capacities. Do we have sympathy for this character because we authentically suspect they’re a good person in spite of their actions, or do we desperately want them to be a good person because we feel so deeply sorry for them?
By: Jessica Goddard The Belko Experiment, directed by Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and written by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), is a cruel, manipulative, needless exploit into pure violence and gore.