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)
By John Corrado In her debut feature Still Night, Burning House, Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Carol Nguyen looks inward, focusing on her own family’s history with grief and mental health. The film seeks to tell the story of her Uncle Thach, who was schizophrenic and died from suicide a decade ago, after jumping out a second story… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Still Night, Burning House (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado Fear of “the other” seems to be one of the prevailing themes throughout Quebec filmmaker Alexandre Franchi’s mix of dark comedy and psychological thriller L’Autre, a title that literally translates to “the other.” The film opens with our protagonist Stan (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) undergoing surgery to remove cancer from the bone in his… Read More #TIFF26 Review: L’Autre (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Canadian author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis returns to the screen with The Betrayers, a well-acted and intriguing adaptation of his own award-winning 2014 novel of the same name. The film centres around Baruch (Michael Aronov), a Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician, who is being pushed to enter into a coalition agreement, while… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Betrayers (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In Being Heumann, the follow up to her Oscar-winning CODA, director Siân Heder dramatizes the story of Judith Heumann, the prominent disability rights activist who helped break down barriers for accessibility. The result is a film that works as a rousing, inspiring crowdpleaser about the disability rights movement in the 1970s, with… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Being Heumann (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The latest movie from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation studio behind beloved modern films like Wolfwalkers, The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells, Julián is very sweet and charming story about a little boy who dreams of being a mermaid. The film centres around the titular Julián (voiced… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Julián (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In his feature debut River, partially inspired by his 2018 short film In Sound, We Live Forever, director Joshua Giuliano crafts a fun slasher movie built around the deceptively simple yet effective premise of three siblings trapped on a river. The siblings are Lucy (Jane Levy), Carla (Jessica Rothe) and Drew (Max… Read More #TIFF26 Review: River (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado A century after it was first published, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway gets a contemporary adaptation from filmmaker brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, who find a fresh angle by setting their version in modern day Lagos, Nigeria. Sophie Okonedo stars in the film as the titular Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Clarissa (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Director, writer and star Jordan Firstman delivers an accomplished debut feature with Club Kid, a major crowdpleaser which plays like the gay, indie, A24-backed answer to Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy. And it’s something special. Firstman stars in the film as Peter, a club promoter in New York City who is living a… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Club Kid (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In Fjord, his second Palme d’Or-winner following 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu crafts a complex film that masterfully balances being a family drama, coming-of-age story, and courtroom procedural. This is a film that exists purely in shades of grey, even literally with the washed out… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Fjord (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Toy Gun Bandit, the new film from Quebec writer-director Rémi St-Michel, is a work that feels inspired by the scrappy, propulsive filmmaking of the Safdie brothers. That’s a lofty comparison, to be sure, but their influence is felt throughout this frenetic Québécois crime movie, which serves as both an entertaining and suspenseful… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Toy Gun Bandit (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In Coward, his third and most ambitious feature yet, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont (Girl, Close) takes us back to World War I. Dhont’s works all explore gender identity and burgeoning sexuality, and those themes get fine-tuned here as he explores the homoerotic tensions between young Belgian soldiers who arrive on the front… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Coward (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The latest from Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, All of a Sudden is primarily a film about the different ways we care for each other, weaving themes about the bureaucratic power structure of a nursing home into a character drama. It’s an ambitious undertaking, even more so when you account for the fact… Read More #TIFF26 Review: All of a Sudden (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Before Noel and Liam Gallagher, the rockstar brothers behind Oasis, actually took the stage again for the first show of their 2025 reunion tour in Cardiff, the idea that they would ever truly make amends, let alone walk out on the same stage holding hands, didn’t seem like a sure thing until… Read More Movie Review: Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger
By John Corrado Illumination’s Minions & Monsters, this summer’s spinoff of the Despicable Me and Minions franchises, is now available on physical media, including 4K Ultra HD. This prequel is set during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and focuses on the Minions inadvertently becoming silent film stars. The main Minion this time around is James,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Minions & Monsters (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado New releases for the week of September 4th, 2026. Theatrical Releases: Onslaught (Wide Release): Director Adam Wingard returns to the horror thriller genre with this quasi-sequel to his 2014 film The Guest. Adria Arjona stars as an Army sniper defending her trailer park and six-year-old daughter (Blake Kennedy) from a trio of… Read More New This Week (09/04/2026): Onslaught, & More!
By John Corrado Onslaught is director Adam Wingard’s return to the horror-thriller genre following his forays into monster movie blockbusters with Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. In fact, Onslaught is such a return to form for Wingard that he has said it takes place in the same universe as his… Read More Movie Review: Onslaught
By John Corrado Following a run in theatres at the start of the summer, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day was released on physical media last week, including 4K Ultra HD. Spielberg’s latest finds him going back to his roots in the sci-fi genre, crafting a UFO movie by way of whistleblower thriller. The film is carried… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Disclosure Day (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado New releases for the week of August 28th, 2026. Theatrical Releases: The Dog Stars (Wide Release): This latest from legendary director Ridley Scott is a post-apocalyptic drama starring Jacob Elordi as a man navigating a world ravaged by a deadly pandemic. Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce round out the cast.… Read More New This Week (08/28/2026): The Dog Stars, Coyote vs. Acme, Finding Emily, & More!
By John Corrado It’s hard to review Coyote vs. Acme without first talking about the long, strange journey that the film has been on to actually reach theatres. After it was completed in 2023, Warner Bros. made the controversial (and quite frankly shameful) decision to not release it, and instead permanently shelve the film as… Read More Movie Review: Coyote vs. Acme
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