By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following up his Oscar-winning masterpiece Moonlight, Barry Jenkins brings James Baldwin’s work to the screen with a highly lyrical sensibility in his latest film If Beale Street Could Talk. Based on Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name, the film tells the story of Tish Rivers (Kiki Layne)… Read More Review: If Beale Street Could Talk
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek auteur behind such singular works as Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, crafts his most widely accessible film yet with The Favourite, without losing any of his usual bite. Set in England in the early years of the 18th century,… Read More Review: The Favourite
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The second feature directed by Brady Corbet, an actor who made his directorial debut in 2015 with The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux focuses on the anatomy of a modern pop star whose life has been impacted by violence. The first half of the film focuses on… Read More Review: Vox Lux
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) There are eight hundred dogs born every year at Guide Dogs for the Blind, only three hundred of which will actually make the cut as working guide dogs. The stories of five of these adorable Labrador puppies, and the humans who help raise them, are told in Pick… Read More Review: Pick of the Litter
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Arriving a whole 54 years after the 1964 original, Mary Poppins Returns breaks the record for the longest amount of time between the release of a sequel and that of its predecessor. This would be an interesting fact on its own, but it would be little more than… Read More Review: Mary Poppins Returns
By John Corrado To say that Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself has been dividing audiences since it premiered at TIFF would be putting it mildly. I spoke to several people during the festival who loved this sprawling, multi-character drama that spans a couple of decades and unfolds in both America and Spain, while critics were quick to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Life Itself
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on a true story from World War I, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero is a charming animated film that recounts the tale of the first dog to ever be given the rank of Sergeant by the United States Army, and the most decorated pooch in American history. Stubby… Read More Blu-ray Review: Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Ben (Lucas Hedges) is a young drug addict, who cuts out of rehab to return home on Christmas Eve. While his mother Holly (Julia Roberts) reluctantly agrees to let him stay for the night, despite disasters over the past two holidays, she goes into panic mode and tries… Read More Review: Ben is Back
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Blaze Foley isn’t a name that you hear very often. An eccentric country singer-songwriter with a penchant for duct tape, Foley was born in Arkansas as Michael David Fuller, and raised in Texas where he grew up performing with his family. He was a contemporary of musicians like… Read More Review: Blaze
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Denzel Washington once again teams up with director Antoine Fuqua for The Equalizer 2, a surprisingly solid followup to their 2014 action film that marks the first sequel of their respective careers. Retired CIA operative Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is now working as a Lyft driver, while still… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Equalizer 2
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The choice to make a film that unfolds entirely on computer screens could seem like a gimmick, but the device is used to riveting effect in Searching, a very well executed missing person thriller that offers a hundred minutes of nerve-rattling suspense. The film opens with a heart-wrenching… Read More Blu-ray Review: Searching
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Migo (Channing Tatum) is a yeti who lives in a complex Bigfoot community atop a mountain in the Himalayas, where they are raised to believe that their world is being held up on the backs of giant mammoths and there is nothing below the clouds. Migo’s father (Danny… Read More Blu-ray Review: Smallfoot
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest entry into James Wan’s Conjuring franchise, The Nun is a prequel that takes place in 1952, and focuses on the origins of the creepy, demonic nun (Bonnie Aarons) that first appeared in The Conjuring 2. The film opens with a young nun (Charlotte Hope) hanging herself… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Nun
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) With a title like Dog Days, which is the the name of this new ensemble romantic comedy that weaves together the stories of multiple characters and the dogs that they love, you just know you are in for something sappy and predictable. So the most unexpected thing about… Read More DVD Review: Dog Days
By John Corrado Based on a true story, Papillon follows Henri “Papillon” Charrière (Charlie Hunnam), a safecracker in Paris who is falsely accused of murder and sent to prison in the penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, where he teams up with the eccentric counterfeiter Louis Dega (Rami Malek) to craft an escape plan.… Read More Blu-ray Review: Papillon
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) There have been some great examples over the years of movies that blend Christmas cheer with horror elements. Bob Clark’s iconic slasher Black Christmas certainly springs to mind as one of the darkest examples, as does Joe Dante’s holiday monster movie Gremlins, and Michael Dougherty’s more recent Krampus.… Read More Review: Anna and the Apocalypse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from Canadian director Jeremy LaLonde, The Go-Getters is a dirty and raunchy low-budget comedy that follows Owen (Aaron Abrams) and Lacie (Tommie-Amber Pirie). The former is a drunkard living in the boiler room of his brother’s (Kristian Bruun) bar, and the latter a drug-addicted hooker whom he… Read More Review: The Go-Getters
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta turns her attention to another director in Searching for Ingmar Bergman, offering an engaging and often insightful portrait of the late Swedish master as a filmmaker, an artist and a father. An accomplished auteur in her own right, who was inspired by Bergman’s work… Read More Review: Searching for Ingmar Bergman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Being a tribute artist can be a lucrative and demanding business, even if your fame largely comes from pretending to be someone else. That’s the main takeaway of Almost Almost Famous, a fairly entertaining documentary that follows a group of classic rock impersonators who are on tour together… Read More Review: Almost Almost Famous
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) A black and white homage to the Mexico of his youth and the women who raised him, Alfonso Caurón’s Roma is a beautiful and haunting work of art, that serves as the filmmaker’s first Spanish language film since Y Tu Mamá También in 2001. The film unfolds through the… Read More Review: Roma
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