By John Corrado Before it became a blockbuster film franchise starring Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible was an Emmy-winning TV series that ran on CBS for seven seasons from 1966 to 1973. Now Paramount is releasing the entire series for the first time ever on Blu-ray this week, in a mammoth box set that includes all… Read More Blu-ray Review: Mission: Impossible: The Original TV Series
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) First published in 1960, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham is one of the most beloved and enduring learn to read books of all time, with its irresistible rhyming scheme made up of just fifty words making it ideal for beginners, not to mention a delight to read… Read More DVD Review: Green Eggs and Ham: The Complete First Season
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Anna Sewell’s 1877 novel Black Beauty, which was written from the perspective of a horse and had an animal rights message that was revelatory for its time, is one of the biggest selling books of all time and has been adapted for the screen a number of times… Read More Disney+ Review: Black Beauty
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Do you want to watch a David Bowie biopic where “Space Oddity” is talked about but never actually heard? That’s the question I kept asking myself while watching Stardust, a movie that is ostensibly about the legendary rock star but doesn’t actually feature any of his music. Considering… Read More Review: Stardust
By John Corrado The video game adaptation Sonic the Hedgehog feels like one of those movies that keeps popping back up. To recap, it was initially supposed to be released in theatres last November, before public outcry over the look of Sonic in the trailer led the studio to delay it by several months to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Sonic the Hedgehog: Limited Collector’s Edition
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2016 South Korean zombie movie Train to Busan is an incredible exercise in genre cinema, a tight, suspenseful thrill ride that unfolds mostly on a train and almost entirely in real time. Seriously, it’s a great action film, and one that I would highly recommend. Now, director… Read More Blu-ray Review: Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by filmmaking brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms, the offbeat Christmas movie Fatman is one of those films that many will watch based on the absurdity of its premise alone, which was revealed in a pretty wild trailer. What is the premise, you might ask? Well,… Read More VOD Review: Fatman
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A grandfather and grandson bond over bocce in Team Marco, a simple but charming family movie that is being released digitally this week and serves as a fine viewing option for families looking for something made outside the studio system. The lead character is Marco (Owen Vaccaro), an… Read More VOD Review: Team Marco
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney pays tribute to the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special in the LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, which is premiering on Disney Plus today. The original TV special, which aired in 1978 between the releases of the first Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, was so widely panned… Read More Disney+ Review: The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special
By John Corrado One of my favourite movies of all time, and a perennial favourite that gets revisited every holiday season, is It’s a Wonderful Life. Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, about a suicidal man named George Bailey (James Stewart) who gets visited by an angel (Henry Travers) on Christmas Eve, is a film that always… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: It’s a Wonderful Life (Steelbook)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The other day, I had a chance to review the first two episodes of Inside Pixar, the very good new docuseries on Disney Plus that introduces us to some of the individuals who help tell the stories we all know and love at Pixar Animation Studios. The show… Read More Disney+ Review: Inside Pixar (Episodes 3, 4 & 5)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The greatest challenge facing writer/director Francis Lee’s Ammonite, which serves as a companion piece of sorts to his acclaimed romantic drama God’s Own Country, has nothing to do with the film itself, but rather has to do with unfair comparisons to the recent Portrait of a Lady on… Read More Review: Ammonite
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 2003, co-directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar released The Corporation, a documentary based upon a book by Canadian professor Joel Bakan that sought to psychoanalyze corporations as if they were people, and came to the conclusion that they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. Now, seventeen years later,… Read More Review: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Pixar Animation Studios is one of those places that I have always been fascinated by and have long dreamed of visiting. Not only am I a huge fan of their movies and characters, but as a studio, the place seems to be a bastion of creativity. The new… Read More Disney+ Review: Inside Pixar (Episodes 1 & 2)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney’s Mulan, the studio’s big budget live action remake of their 1998 animated classic, has had a pretty rough time getting in front of audiences. The film became one of the first major cinematic casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic when its theatrical release got cancelled back in March,… Read More Review: Mulan (Digital Release)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Spontaneous, the new teen romance about high school kids who start spontaneously exploding, is one of those films that takes a wild and totally original premise and just, well, runs with it. Based on the novel by Aaron Starmer, the film, which is arriving on DVD this week,… Read More DVD Review: Spontaneous
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) What if Encyclopedia Brown, the lead character from Donald J. Sobol’s book series about a young private eye, grew up? That’s the main question posed by The Kid Detective, a very good Canadian indie film from writer/director Evan Morgan that explores what happens when a former high school… Read More Review: The Kid Detective
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) An older couple fight to save their grandson and daughter-in-law from a violent family of hillbillies in Let Him Go. If that sounds like an overly simplistic description of writer/director Thomas Bezucha’s film, which was adapted from a novel by Larry Watson, it’s also the easiest way to… Read More Review: Let Him Go
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) There are so many different ways people grieve, that there is really no “right” way to deal with the death of a close family member, especially one that you had a complicated relationship with. This becomes a main theme in writer/director Josh Melrod’s micro budget indie film Major… Read More VOD Review: Major Arcana
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) SpongeBob SquarePants, the beloved cartoon character who made his TV debut in 1999, gets a live action reimagining in The SpongeBob Musical, a boisterous stage show that premiered on Broadway in 2017 and received a dozen Tony nominations. Now a filmed version of the show, which was broadcast… Read More DVD Review: The SpongeBob Musical: Live On Stage!
The Joy of Movies 