#REVIEW: “RYE LANE”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
There’s something about the Rom-Com genre that the Brits do so well. They brought us Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral and the unforgettable Bridget Jones Trilogy. Now they bring us the delightful, enchanting and hilarious Rye Lane. A guaranteed smash-hit Romantic Comedy for the ages, just having raised the curtain at the 2023 TIFF Next Wave Film Festival.
It follows 20-somethings Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) who are both ...
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#REVIEW: “A THOUSAND AND ONE”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
Writer-Director A.V. Rockwell delivers an exceptional story of family and parenthood.
We start off in New York City in 1994. Free-spirited and loyal Inez (Teyana Taylor) has just been released from prison. With a beeper clipped to her waist, she’s doing hair to make some money. When she sees her six-year-old son Terry (a mesmerizing Aaron Kingsley Adetola) across the street, she decides to kidnap him from the foster care system. Together they ...
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#REVIEW: “DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES”
Review by Nicholas Porteous for Mr. Will Wong
How does one go about adapting an open-ended, decades-old tabletop RPG--devoid of any well-established characters, where the narrative completely changes from game to game depending on the players--in a world of medieval fantasy epics like Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and their countless spin-offs and would-be clones? Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves' answer to this riddle is wonderfully straightforward: don't take it too ...
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#REVIEW: “A GOOD PERSON”
Review by Nicholas Porteous for Mr. Will Wong
A Good Person is Zach Braff's fourth film as a Director, along with his first (and possibly last?) feature collaboration with then-girlfriend Florence Pugh. Though I wouldn't say it's completely bereft of Braffiness--that is, his specific visual panache and desire for melodrama mixed with borderline screwball-level gags more evident in Garden State and Wish I Was Here--I will say this is the least Braffy movie he's made thus far. Whether that's ...
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#REVIEW: “JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
John Wick: Chapter 4 is a brutal, bloody and wildly fun addition to this beloved saga.
Once again, Hitman John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is trying to gain his freedom from the High Table. Wick realizes there is a path to freedom, but first, he must defeat the new enemy Marquis (Bill Skarsgård) who wants him dead. Marquis has powerful alliances across the world and an ever-flowing fountain of money that allows him to increase the price ...
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#REVIEW: “INSIDE”
Review by Nicholas Porteous for Mr. Will Wong
Willem Dafoe is an Art Thief who finds himself trapped in a rich man's high rise apartment after a heist gone wrong, but his fears quickly turn from whether he'll be caught to whether he'll ever be found--sealed in a cage with limited supplies, next to no plumbing, and absolutely zero sense of when or even if its owner might return.
Inside opens with a provocative voiceover from Dafoe about the nature of art, and his unhealthy relationship with ...
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#REVIEW: “CHAMPIONS”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
Champions follows Marcus (Woody Harrelson), a minor-league basketball coach, who after having a physical altercation on the court with the head coach of the team, finds himself without a job. One night, after drowning his sorrows in a local bar, he gets behind the wheel of a car and crashes into a parked police cruiser. He’s warned by his Attorney McGurk (an unrecognizable Mike Smith who played Bubbles in The Trailer Park Boys) that the ...
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#REVIEW: “CREED III”
Review by George Kozera for Mr. Will Wong
CREED lll is the ninth installment in the Oscar-winning boxing franchise “Rocky” and is the first one without its creator, Sylvester Stallone on screen. Instead, this movie not only stars Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, it is Jordan’s feature film directorial debut. Filmed with finesse in IMAX, this movie unfolds with all the tropes we have been used to seeing throughout the franchise (does the audience really not think that the hero would not ...
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#REVIEW: “THERE’S ALWAYS HOPE”
By Mr. Will Wong
Written and directed by Tim Lewiston, there's something cathartic about THERE'S ALWAYS HOPE, especially for those who have had their hearts broken.
We meet Hope (Hannah Chinn) who travels to Portugal with her father, a very successful Writer Jonathan (Colm Meaney) who is penning his most important work to date. We are met with the mystery why her mother Samantha (Kate Ashfield), who also is his Agent, has left him. Above this, she leaves him for her uncle Luke (John Light). ...
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#REVIEW: “COCAINE BEAR”
By Mr. Will Wong
A story so unbear-lievable it had to be true. Sorta.
In 1985, a Black Bear was found dead in Northern Georgia. Along with it were 40 opened plastic containers of Cocaine from a duffel bag, resulting in its death after having consumed a lethal quantity of the drug. The Cocaine was dropped out of a plane after it had been carrying too heavy a load, resulting in an escaping convicted drug dealer falling to his death after a parachute failed to launch.
Co-produced by Academy ...
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