By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Set in the world of competitive tablescaping, Set! is one of those quirky, special interest documentaries that does a good job of introducing us… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Set!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada In the opening scene of The Face of Anonymous, novelist Ian Thornton recounts how he met a panhandler in Toronto some years back. He… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: The Face of Anonymous
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada The “ISIS brides” as they are called, the Western woman who travelled overseas from Europe and North America to join the terrorist group in… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: The Return: Life After ISIS
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Based on the book by Michael Davis, Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a heartwarming documentary that explores the history of… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada June and Jean Millington are sisters who moved to California from the Philippines in the early 1960s, and formed a band as teenagers, with… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Fanny: The Right to Rock
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada In the 1960s, brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward fulfilled their dream of becoming music producers when they turned their family farm in Wales into… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Directed by Margaret Byrne, a filmmaker who herself is living with mental illness, Any Given Day is a candid portrait of people struggling to… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Any Given Day
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Shawn Bath, the main subject of the engaging and appropriately titled documentary Hell or Clean Water, is a commercial diver in Newfoundland who has… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Hell or Clean Water
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Documentary filmmaker Jesse McCracken returns to his hometown of Markdale, Ontario in Grey Roads, to explore how the town has changed since he grew… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Grey Roads
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Director Ann Shin explores the concept of “digital immortality” in A.rtifical I.mmortality, the opening night film of this year’s virtual Hot Docs, a thought-provoking… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: A.rtificial I.mmortality
By John Corrado The 93rd Academy Awards have officially come to a close, with Nomadland triumphing for Best Picture. Chloe Zhao also won Best Director for the film, becoming only the second female filmmaker to win the award. Rounding out a trio of much deserved wins for Nomadland was Frances McDormand, who triumphed in the… Read More Winners of the 93rd Academy Awards
By John Corrado This is it, folks. After the longest awards season ever, the 2021 Oscars are happening tonight. I’ve spent the last week catching up with movies, and have seen 40 out of the 41 nominated features, as well as a couple of the shorts. Here are my predictions for what will win in… Read More My 2021 Oscar Predictions
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), Best Supporting Actor (LaKeith Stanfield), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Sean Bobbitt), and Best Original Song – “Fight for You” Confidently directed by emerging filmmaker Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah dramatizes the life and… Read More Review: Judas and the Black Messiah
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography (Dariusz Wolski), Best Original Score (James Newton Howard), Best Production Design and Best Sound A star vehicle for Tom Hanks that really capitalizes on his calming onscreen presence, News of the World is a Western that could best be described as… Read More Review: News of the World
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Sound Tom Hanks stars in the stripped down World War II naval thriller Greyhound as Commander Ernest Krause of the US Navy who, on his first war-time assignment, is sent to protect a convoy of 37 Allied ships during the Battle of… Read More Review: Greyhound
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature Among this year’s many Oscar nominees from the streaming giant Netflix is My Octopus Teacher, a surprisingly touching nature documentary that captures the unexpected friendship between a scuba diver and an octopus, from captivating beginning to poignant end. The film… Read More Netflix Review: My Octopus Teacher
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature A dark horse contender for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, The Mole Agent is a low-key charmer of a film that follows an elderly gentleman in Chile who is hired to go undercover in a nursing home to investigate suspected mistreatment,… Read More Review: The Mole Agent
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature The title of filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin, notably the first film from Tunisia to receive an Oscar nomination, ends up being pretty self-explanatory. It’s literally about a man who sells his skin and has… Read More Review: The Man Who Sold His Skin
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature Director Derek Tsang’s anti-bullying film Better Days, which became a massive box office hit in China upon its release in 2019, is a sprawling teen melodrama that mixes elements of romance and crime drama to pretty good if at times… Read More Review: Better Days
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature Like all of Aardman’s productions, it’s clear watching A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon that this film was a labour of love for all involved. The claymation animation is not only incredibly well done, but also a delight to watch, with… Read More Netflix Review: A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
The Joy of Movies 