By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest feature from indie filmmaker Miranda July, her first since The Future in 2011 and third overall following her 2005 breakout Me and You and Everyone We Know, Kajillionaire is an oddball crime comedy that is chock full of the writer/director’s usual eccentricities. The film is populated… Read More Review: Kajillionaire
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) A moving first feature from writer/director Edson Oda, Nine Days is the sort of high concept indie film that I love to discover, using the imaginative premise of souls competing to be born to explore no less than what it means to feel and be alive. The film… Read More Review: Nine Days
By John Corrado Last week, Paramount released a new five film collection of Stephen King adaptations on Blu-ray, right in time for the annual October horror movie marathons leading up to Halloween. Below is a brief rundown of the films included in the five disc set, which span from 1983 to 2019 and are compactly… Read More Blu-ray Review: Stephen King 5-Movie Collection
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Spike Lee, David Byrne’s American Utopia is a film version of the Broadway show that the former frontman for the band Talking Heads staged in 2019 at the Hudson Theatre in New York. It was the opening night film at TIFF eleven days ago, and watching… Read More #TIFF20 Review: David Byrne’s American Utopia (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Making his feature directorial debut, actor David Oyelowo crafts a wonderful and nostalgic throwback to the classic kids adventure films of the 1980s with The Water Man, which I’m pleased to say is one of the nicest surprises of this year’s festival. The film’s protagonist is Gunner Boon… Read More #TIFF20 Review: The Water Man (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Based on the true story of a father who started walking across America to raise awareness of bullying in honour of his son, Good Joe Bell is a well-intentioned drama that includes some moving moments, but makes an equal number of questionable and frustrating storytelling choices. Joe Bell… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Good Joe Bell (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Alba truffle, which grows in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy, is considered to be one of the world’s rarest and most exclusive food items, and directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw take us into the unique world of the men who forage for them in their… Read More #TIFF20 Review: The Truffle Hunters (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen, who also stars in the film in addition to serving as the writer, producer and composer on the project, Falling explores the relationship between a middle aged son and his ailing, elderly father. And it’s the sort of rugged, powerful drama that… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Falling (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Lily (Susan Sarandon) is terminally ill, and wants to get her whole family back together again for one final weekend, before she ends her own life with the assistance of her physician husband Paul (Sam Neill). Once she is ready to say goodbye, Lily will drink a toxic… Read More VOD Review: Blackbird
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Credited to directors Hao Wu and Weixi Chen, as well as another filmmaker who remains anonymous, 76 Days is a ripped from the headlines documentary made up entirely of candid footage that was shot in Wuhan, China earlier this year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The… Read More #TIFF20 Review: 76 Days (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The English-language debut of Hungarian director Kornél Mundruzcó, Pieces of a Woman is a very emotional drama that is built around a striking performance by Vanessa Kirby as a woman forging her own path through grief, which just won her the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Pieces of a Woman (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Welcome to New Order, the latest film from Mexican director Michel Franco that brutally shows a dystopic nightmare unfolding in Mexico City. The action starts at the wedding of Marianne (Naian Gonzaléz Norvind), an upperclass woman in a rich neighbourhood who is trying to get married as the… Read More #TIFF20 Review: New Order (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Sam Pollard, the extensively researched documentary MLK/FBI sheds light on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive quest to take down Martin Luther King Jr., viewing the non-violent civil rights leader as a threat to the national order. Using the powers afforded to him at the Federal… Read More #TIFF20 Review: MLK/FBI (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) A swooning, tragic romance that unfolds on the coast of Normandy and is set against the perfect backdrop of the 1980s, director François Ozon’s queer melodrama Summer of 85 is a film that won’t work for everyone, but it really worked for me. When we first meet teenaged… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Summer of 85 (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A Mohawk girl comes of age against the backdrop of the Oka Crisis in Beans, a drama that reimagines the 1990 showdown between several levels of police and Indigenous land protectors from two Quebec Mohawk communities, who were trying to stop the town of Oka’s planned expansion of… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Beans (Discovery)
By John Corrado John Hughes wrote but didn’t direct Pretty in Pink, the 1986 high school romantic comedy starring his frequent muse Molly Ringwald, which is a fact that often seems overlooked. The directing duties on the film, which Paramount is releasing for the first time on Blu-ray, instead went to Howard Deutch, a former… Read More Blu-ray Review: Pretty in Pink
By John Corrado Audrey Hepburn received five Oscar nominations throughout her acting career, but the only film that she ever won for was Roman Holiday, which also happened to be her first starring role in a motion picture. It also happens to be one of my absolute favourite performances of hers, helping turn her into… Read More Blu-ray Review: Roman Holiday
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Inspired by Thomas King’s autobiographical 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, the documentary Inconvenient Indian takes a very unconventional approach to adapting the source material. Using King’s book as the jumping off point, director Michelle Latimer has instead crafted a… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Inconvenient Indian (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest collaboration between Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg and actor Mads Mikkelsen, following their Oscar-nominated 2012 drama The Hunt, Another Round is a well acted film about drinking and the impact, both good and bad, that alcohol can have on people’s lives. Martin (Mikkelsen) is a high school… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Another Round (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Built around a vital and exciting conversation between four Black icons, One Night in Miami is one of the best movies of the year. The majority of the the film is set on the night of February 25th, 1964, in the hours after young boxer Cassius Clay (Eli… Read More #TIFF20 Review: One Night in Miami (Gala Presentations)
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