By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A followup to the 2012 film, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back finds its title character (Tom Cruise) no longer working for the military. But when he finds out that his old friend Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) is under investigation for espionage, they go on the run to clear her name. Also… Read More Blu-ray Review: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
By John Corrado Phiona Mutesi (Madine Nalwanga) is a girl living in the slums of Uganda with her mother (Lupita Nyong’o) and siblings. When she is taken under the wing of kind coach Robert Ketende (David Oyelowo), he helps foster the innate talent she has for chess to become a world champion. Based on a true story,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Queen of Katwe
By John Corrado As Disney continues to reissue animated classics on Blu-ray, the studio’s timeless 1940 film Pinocchio is the latest addition to their Signature Collection. Based on an Italian novel, the film tells the story of a wooden marionette named Pinocchio (Dickie Jones) whose lonely creator Geppetto (Christian Rub) dreams of him being a real boy, and has his wish granted… Read More Blu-ray Review: Pinocchio: The Signature Collection
By John Corrado With my list of the best movies of 2016 having gone up over the weekend, it’s time for my rundown of the best documentaries of last year. This list took me a while to put together, with a lot of deliberation between order of the films, but I’m happy with the way things have finally… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2016
By John Corrado I don’t think anyone would deny that 2016 was a year of ups and downs, both at the movies and especially in real life. But the greatness of some of the films that came out of last year in spite of all the craziness and political uncertainty can’t be denied, and those… Read More The Best Movies of 2016
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) is a prospector in Texas who is desperate for a big break and becomes convinced that he can strike gold in the jungles of Indonesia. So in 1988 he teams up with geologist Michael Acosta (Edgar Remírez) to help him excavate and get their commodity on the stock… Read More Review: Gold
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Chad Cutler (Michael Fassbender) lives with his wife (Lyndsey Marshal) and their two young kids in the same trailer park as his father Cal (Brendan Gleeson), a notorious crime boss who doesn’t want his son to stray from the family business. Chad is desperate to break away from… Read More Review: Trespass Against Us
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster), the former a divorced father and the latter an ex-convict, are brothers who are violently robbing a series of banks around West Texas, trying to make back enough money to pay a debt. Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil… Read More Review: Hell or High Water
By John Corrado The 2002 action film xXx has now arrived in a new Blu-ray edition to coincide with both the film’s 15th anniversary, as well as the release of the franchise’s latest instalment xXx: Return of Xander Cage, which just came to theatres this past weekend. A solid box office hit of its time, xXx follows Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), a thrill-seeking extreme sports… Read More Blu-ray Review: xXx: 15th Anniversary Edition
By John Corrado After returning from the war, Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender) decides to live a life of solitude as a lighthouse keeper. Then he falls in love with Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander), and she moves to the island with him. When they find a dead man and a baby girl floating in a rowboat, they… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Light Between Oceans
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Tom Ford, following up his masterful directorial debut A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals is a story within a story where the story within the story is infinitely more compelling than the actual plot. This means it’s only really half worth seeing. The film follows Susan Morrow… Read More Review: Nocturnal Animals
Split Review By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) M. Night Shyamalan has had a rocky career following his early successes like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, slowly segueing into self-parody in the years that followed. But now the director has returned with Split, a ludicrous and often entertaining thriller that continues his recent resurgence of… Read More Three Views: Split
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Although The Founder is sometimes staged under the guise of being a feel good story, it’s the bitterness lurking underneath the surface that makes this biopic interesting. The film recounts the true story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), an “over the hill milkshake machine salesman” from Illinois, who discovered a family burger joint in… Read More Review: The Founder
Hidden Figures Review By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) A crowbar smashes into the sign for a “colored” washroom, tearing it from the wall. A piece of chalk passes from a white man’s hand to a black woman at a classified NASA briefing, where there was previously no protocol for women attending, let alone people… Read More Three Views: Hidden Figures
Fences Review By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) is a man who is almost always talking, filled with stories and sharing his opinions on just about everything. When Fences opens, we find him already in the middle of a conversation with his coworker Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), as they both cling to… Read More Three Views: Fences
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Christian Wolfe (Ben Affleck) is an accountant who has Asperger’s syndrome, and was raised by a militant father (Robert C. Treveiler) who taught him survival skills so that he could stand up against bullies. These survival skills come in handy considering that most of his clients are crime bosses and drug… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Accountant
By John Corrado First released in 2001, and receiving Oscar nominations for Will Smith and Jon Voight, Ali is an impressionistic biopic that follows Muhammad Ali (Will Smith) over a decade of his life in the 1960s and ’70s. Last year, the film received a new cut to coincide with its 15th anniversary, which is now… Read More Blu-ray Review: Ali: 15th Anniversary Commemorative Edition
By Erin Corrado As part of Canada’s Top 10, the Student Shorts Programme plays today at 1pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Filmmakers will be in attendance, and the Student Short Film Prizes will be announced following the screening. Each film was made as part of a university program by students, and while there… Read More Review: Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts Programme
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first thing we see gracing the screen in La La Land, the new throwback to old musicals that is good but not quite as good as you’ve heard, is a nicely retro logo for Summit Entertainment, presented on a black and white screen in Academy aspect ratio. The screen pulls out to announce… Read More Review: La La Land
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) “Maybe I’m a feminist,” teenage protagonist Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) tells his mother Dorothea (Annette Bening) partway through 20th Century Women, and there is perhaps no better statement to sum up what makes this film so special. This is the story of a boy essentially being raised by the woman… Read More Review: 20th Century Women
The Joy of Movies 