By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 31st, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Ezra (Limited): Bobby Cannavale stars in this dramedy, which had a gala premiere at last year’s TIFF, as a standup comic trying to do the best for his autistic son Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald), putting him further at odds with his… Read More New This Week (05/31/2024): Ezra, Backspot, & More!
By John Corrado Ezra is the name of the 11-year-old son that standup comedian Max Brandel (Bobby Cannavale) shares with his ex-wife Jenna (Rose Byrne), with disagreements around how to parent him driving a wedge between them. Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald) is autistic; he’s a bright kid who often “movie talks” (using dialogue from movies… Read More Movie Review: Ezra
By John Corrado In his new documentary Jim Henson Idea Man, filmmaker Ron Howard crafts an enjoyable biographical portrait of the creator of The Muppets, Jim Henson. It was the genius and creativity of Henson, who hand-stitched Kermit the Frog out of his mother’s coat, that gave birth to these iconic characters. A fledgling filmmaker… Read More Movie Review: Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+)
By John Corrado Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), Bob Marley: One Love is a biopic of iconic reggae artist Bob Marley that features a dedicated performance by Kingsley Ben-Adir, but is otherwise a mixed bag. Ben-Adir, who masterfully portrayed civil rights leader Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, now takes on the… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Bob Marley: One Love
By John Corrado The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In honour of her 18th birthday, Elliot (Maisy Stella) decides to do shrooms in the woods with her best friends Ruthie (Maddie… Read More #InsideOut2024 Review: My Old Ass
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 24th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Wide Release): George Miller follows up his Oscar-winning 2015 action masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road with this prequel starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. I just saw this in IMAX. It’s… Read More New This Week (05/24/2024): Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Garfield Movie, Babes, & More!
By John Corrado The feature directorial debut of actress Pamela Adlon, Babes is a comedy about motherhood and adult friendship, that explores the bond between Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau), and how it changes when the former becomes pregnant with her first child after the latter has just had her second. Eden and… Read More Movie Review: Babes
By John Corrado In their documentary The Beach Boys, co-directors Frank Marshall (The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart) and Thom Zimney (Western Stars, Springsteen on Broadway) team up to offer a polished look at the history of the California surf rock band The Beach Boys. Made up of brothers Brian, Dennis… Read More Movie Review: The Beach Boys (Disney+)
By John Corrado Garfield, that lazy, lasagna-loving orange cat from the Jim Davis comic strips, returns to the big screen in Sony’s aptly titled The Garfield Movie. Arriving two decades after the live action Garfield, which had Bill Murray voicing the sarcastic feline, this first fully animated theatrical feature works as an enjoyable caper, that… Read More Movie Review: The Garfield Movie
By John Corrado Made by Sony to capitalize on the success of the MCU, and take advantage of the fact that they still own the Spider-Man rights, Madame Web falls into the Venom or Morbius category of modern comic book movies. The feature directorial debut of S.J. Clarkson, whose previous credits are all in TV,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Madame Web
By John Corrado The title of writer-director John Krasinski’s new movie IF is an acronym that stands for imaginary friend; you know, the friends that children make up in their minds, which tend to get forgotten as they grow up. The story centres around Bea (Cailey Fleming), a 12-year-old girl who is staying with her… Read More Movie Review: IF
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 17th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: IF (Wide Release): This latest from writer-director John Krasinski is an ambitious family movie that stars Cailee Fleming as Bea, a 12-year-old girl who teams up with a man (Ryan Reynolds) who can see imaginary friends, to help them get back… Read More New This Week (05/17/2024): IF, I Saw the TV Glow, & More!
By John Corrado The supernatural revenge thriller The Crow is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and Paramount has released the film for the first time on 4K Ultra HD. Based on James O’Barr’s comic books, The Crow stars Brandon Lee as Eric Draven, a musician who is murdered on Devil’s Night and returns from… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Crow: 30th Anniversary Edition
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 10th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wide Release): This latest film in the Apes saga is a solid start to this next chapter of the franchise, focused on a young ape named Noa (Owen Teague) several generations after the rise… Read More New This Week (05/10/2024): Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Evil Does Not Exist, & More!
By John Corrado In We Grown Now, writer-director Minhal Haig offers a vivid portrait of childhood and growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects circa 1992. Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) are two young Black boys who are best friends. They hang out together in an abandoned unit, and the film… Read More Movie Review: We Grown Now
By John Corrado When the Planet of the Apes series was revived in 2011 with the pleasantly surprising Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it led to one of the best modern blockbuster trilogies with the two Matt Reeves-directed follow-ups Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the… Read More Movie Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
By John Corrado Released in 1970 amidst the band’s public breakup, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s infamous music documentary Let It Be offered a candid portrait of The Beatles recording their album of the same name in 1969. Behind the scenes footage from these sessions provided the basis for director Peter Jackson’s in-depth docuseries The Beatles: Get… Read More Movie Review: The Beatles: Let It Be (Disney+)
By John Corrado Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is an awkward high school loner in 1989 who falls for the reanimated corpse of a man from the Victorian era whose grave she likes to visit in the horror comedy Lisa Frankenstein, written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body). Following the horror movie death of her mother,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Lisa Frankenstein (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto In 2019, Ina Steiner and her husband David, the bloggers behind the website EcommerceBytes who specialized in providing advice to eBay sellers, began receiving a series of threatening and intimidating messages. These messages gave way to a… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: Whatever It Takes
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto This is Going to Be Big is a very heartwarming and inspiring documentary that follows a group of neurodiverse high schoolers in Australia preparing for a school play, and is refreshingly told from the perspectives of the… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: This is Going to Be Big
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