By: Addison Wylie My experience with Inside Llewyn Davis is not like any I can recently recall off the top of my head. My appreciation for it came hours after watching it and declaring the film was a bit of a wet noodle. The latest film from the Coen Brothers was unsatisfying. Then again, the film was the type of work from Ethan and Joel Coen that is not my cup o’ tea. The Coen’s…
By: Addison Wylie American Hustle is like watching a group of distinguished hard boiled card players play poker when you’re only learning the ropes. None of them will break their deadpan expression or expose their hand. Suddenly, someone will make a game changing move and raise the stakes. Someone to your left leans over and – with pure exuberance – tells you how important the move was. Meanwhile, you nod with acknowledgment and when they’re…
By: Addison Wylie It’s easy to see why Quentin Tarantino named Big Bad Wolves as the best film of 2013. It’s basically a love letter to the filmmaker’s earlier work – an elaboration on that infamous torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s bottled thriller has three men (a father who’s daughter has been kidnapped and murdered, a renegade cop, and a tied up potential criminal) spar with one another to…
By: Addison Wylie Berberian Sound Studio didn’t frighten me. It didn’t creep, weird, or freak me out either. I didn’t get any sort of shivers out of the experience nor did I get any heebies or jeebies. If Peter Strickland’s film is anything, it’s mildly unsettling. It smartly pleads the case that our imaginations can provide strokes of detail if a film supplies the foundation for which our thoughts are built on. It’s absolutely true…
By: Addison Wylie While it’s not a horror, the scariest aspect of The Purge is how seriously the concept is taken. James DeMonaco issues a smart move and doesn’t make the idea of a 12-hour violent free-for-all campy by any means. He plays his role as writer/director with a straight face and watches that his thriller and its screenplay keeps its realism but doesn’t come off as oppressive or stuffy. This warped way of communal…
By: Addison Wylie Everyone has their own type of vice. Helene’s is her camera. Although she’s able to enthral people with her stunning photography, it’s an interest of hers that she chooses to take up a large portion of her life. The high she gets off of the perfect picture is that of a drug. Like a drug would do, Helene’s talent keeps her in her own world while others are kept out. Her daughter,…
By: Addison Wylie The fine people at Disney usually have a good handle on their films, which is why the occasional slip-up- like Planes or last year’s Cars 2 makes me more sad of its existence than angry at how bad it is. Planes, an animated film taking place in the Cars universe, plays like an undemanding direct-to-DVD time filler. It’s funny that Planes comes out on DVD/Blu-ray a week after Blockbuster announced their final closings…
MSC: The Movie is the fabric of a parent’s nightmare. After countless bleeding hearts complaining about imitations inspired by shows like Jackass and underground guilty pleasures like Bumfights, Peter Guzda and his knucklehead cronies come along with a movie that proves all of them right. In the early 2000’s, Guzda started high school with an open mind. He soon met up with other students who shared a similar sense of humour and boredom. Welland, Ontario…
By: Addison Wylie Films like Short Term 12 are sometimes the toughest movies to write about. They make elaborate blockbusters like Inception look like a peanut. It’s just so easy to say Short Term 12 is great, recommend it profusely, and move on. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film is about a foster care supervisor who is having difficulties expressing herself. She keeps emotions sealed tight and lets her empathy feel for her. Instead of declaring Cretton’s…
By: Addison Wylie Rodney Ascher’s analytical documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is fascinating through and through. The narrated ideas and theories provided by featured fans range from being thought-provoking to farfetched over stretches; but the impassion behind each deconstruction cannot be faked. Some of the points are built on flimsy foundations, but because these committed fans of Kubrick’s adaptation have put a lot of time and work into proving their meanings (including freeze frames,…