By John Corrado Live-action adaptations of animated films can be a contentious thing, but if only they were all as lovely as Look Back, Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda’s live-action adaptation of the popular anime and manga of the same name. The story follows Fujino (Furi Nanase), a young manga artist in elementary school who draws… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Look Back (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Eight years ago, Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong made Burning, a masterful slow-burn thriller. Now, in Possible Love, Lee’s belated follow up to that 2018 film, the director crafts a complex character drama focused on the entanglements between two married couples. Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) are a working class couple… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Possible Love (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In Anchors Aweigh, writer-director-star Matt Barats delivers the most deadpan of deadpan comedies, mixed with video essay and home movie collage of loosely connected vignettes. The result is a mix of breakup comedy and meta mockumentary that feels destined for cult status. Playing a version of himself, Barats stars in the film… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Anchors Aweigh (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado Written and directed by Lauren Miller Rogen, Babies is a bittersweet comedy about the personal choice whether or not to have kids, that draws a lot of elements from her own life with husband Seth Rogen. Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick star in the film as Aaron and Annie, a happily married… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Babies (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The latest work from Winnipeg filmmaker Matthew Rankin (The 20th Century, Universal Language), Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney is a gonzo Canadian political documentary by way of archival footage collage, and, well, it rocks. Backed by the National Film Board, this portrait of Canada’s 18th Prime Minister is a lot wackier than… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado Martin McDonagh is no stranger to the hitman buddy comedy, something that he did brilliantly in his 2008 feature debut In Bruges and 2012’s Seven Psychopaths. McDonagh’s latest, Wild Horse Nine, adds surprisingly somber and soulful notes to the formula, mixing his usual very funny dialogue with surprisingly moving themes of memory and… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Wild Horse Nine (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Director Simon Stone’s Elsinore, a moving drama about literally giving your life to art, is ostensibly a biopic of Scottish actor Ian Charleson. But it emotionally focuses on one key aspect of the actor’s legacy, who found success with Oscar-winner Chariots of Fire in 1981, and had opportunities mostly dry up afterwards.… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Elsinore (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In his latest work, The Man I Love, celebrated filmmaker Ira Sachs crafts an understated AIDS drama, guided by an excellent performance from Rami Malek as a theatre actor in 1988. Malek’s Jimmy lives with his partner Dennis (Tom Sturridge) in New York City. A new love interest emerges when Vincent (Luther… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Man I Love (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Filmmaker Andrew Haigh follows up his beloved 2023 film All Of Us Strangers with A Long Winter, a haunting, beautifully shot slow-burn character drama about families and gender roles that is itself sort of a ghost story. The film is set in rural Colorado, where Mike (Fred Hechinger) lives with his family;… Read More #TIFF26 Review: A Long Winter (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Love of Your Life is the sophomore feature from Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer turned filmmaker who made her directorial debut in 2024 with The Fire Inside. This one is an old school romantic drama, starring Margaret Qualley in a very good performance that would make her rom-com royalty mother Andie MacDowell proud.… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Love of Your Life (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado A series of Faustian bargains underpin Italian director Paolo Strippoli’s confidently directed psychological horror movie The Spiral, which is designed to provoke uncomfortable and disturbing moral questions as well as squirms. The film opens on Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano) in Rome, being paid a visit by her estranged mother Anna (Jasmine Trinca)… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Spiral (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado In following up her modern cult favourite The Love Witch, director Anna Biller delivers another idiosyncratic and meticulously crafted homage to a bygone era of filmmaking. The sumptuous visuals define Biller’s latest, which serves as a Technicolor tribute to Japanese ghost stories by way of Medieval England, by way of visually striking… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Face of Horror (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado Caleb Hearon gets a starring role in director Kris Rey’s Trash Mountain, a heartfelt and funny indie dramedy that has some familiar beats but presents them in a mostly satisfying way. Hearon stars in the film as Gavin, a gay man living in Chicago, where he has found his people as the… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Trash Mountain (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In her debut feature Tangles, director Leah Nelson crafts an incredibly moving animated film that poignantly handles the devastating experience of Alzheimer’s and how it impacts a whole family. The film is an adaptation of author and illustrator Sarah Leavitt’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. At the start of the… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Tangles (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) gets a much deserved starring role in All That She Wants, a very enjoyable Canadian romantic-comedy from co-directors Scarlett Bermingham and Andrew Rhymer. It’s the sort of film that hits the rom-com beats and does them all very well, while adding some fresh twists to the genre. Murphy… Read More #TIFF26 Review: All That She Wants (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado A local community theatre provides the backdrop for The Debut, Jesse Eisenberg’s third film as a director following his Oscar-winning A Real Pain. If that film was defined not only by its brilliant writing but also the performances of Eisenberg himself and Best Supporting Actor winner Kieran Culkin, this one is built… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Debut (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Adam Samuels (Taron Egerton), the protagonist in writer-director Jonathan Schey’s dark, high concept sex comedy Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, is one of the “nice guys.” We know because this he tells every woman he picks up that he is one. Adam is the lone male working at an art gallery in… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Everybody Wants to F*ck Me (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado There’s little denying that 1976’s underdog boxing movie Rocky is one of the most beloved and enduring American films of all time. It was the Italian-American success story, and now director Peter Farrelly’s rip-roaring crowdpleaser I Play Rocky cleverly turns the making of the movie – and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone’s dogged persistence… Read More #TIFF26 Review: I Play Rocky (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Ancestors is the directorial debut of Irish filmmaker David Turpin, who previously co-wrote the Gothic horror movie The Lodgers. This is also, in its own way, sort of a ghost story, with Turpin using the AIDS epidemic as the backdrop for a film about legacy. Turpin’s film is set in London in… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Ancestors (Discovery)
By John Corrado Director, writer, and star Cody Lightning (Hey, Viktor!) draws from the well of the underdog sports movie for his second feature Smudge the Blades, an enjoyable homegrown hockey movie centred around the Treaty 6 Blades, an Indigenous U-18 hockey team in Northern Alberta. The film opens with a fight breaking out on… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Smudge the Blades (Centrepiece)
The Joy of Movies 