By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is the French Canadian filmmaker’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 sci-fi novel of the same name. And the movie, which focuses on the beginning half of Herbert’s book and is intended as the first in a two-part saga (the opening title card says Dune:… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Dune (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Nostalgia and ghosts of the past collide in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, the British filmmaker’s very dark, stylish, and gloriously entertaining tribute to both London in the Swinging Sixties and Italian giallo films. This fondness for the past is represented through the movie’s heroine, Eloise (Thomasin… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Last Night in Soho (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The feature debut of writer-director Haya Waseem, who has made a number of short films, Quickening is a young adult drama told from the unique perspective of a young Pakistani-Canadian woman in the GTA suburbs. The film centres around Sheila (Arooj Azeem), who is in her first year… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Quickening (Discovery)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Frank Farelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) is an out of work sad-sack who is hired as the new “middle man” in the fictional town of Karmack, USA. The job involves being dispatched out to deliver bad news to residents when people die or accidents happen, a surprisingly common occurrence… Read More #TIFF21 Review: The Middle Man (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Stephen Chbosky’s big screen take on Dear Evan Hansen, the Broadway musical with songs by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul that swept the Tonys in 2017, is a pretty good stage to screen adaptation. Even if the material is not quite as impactful onscreen as it was onstage,… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Dear Evan Hansen (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A new short film written, directed and produced by Canadian filmmaker Albert Shin, Together focuses on two anonymous strangers, a younger woman (Ahn So Yo) and an older man (Kim Jae-Rok), who meet up in a motel room by the sea in South Korea. Shin made this film… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Together (Short Cuts)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Anna (Alanna Bale), the immortal protagonist of Kicking Blood, is a young vampire who is intrigued by mortals. She works a day job in a library, and is friends with her dying, elderly co-worker (Rosemary Dunsmore), which is perplexing to the rest of her undead crew who only… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Kicking Blood (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Indigenous-led survival thriller Night Raiders is set in the year 2043, and imagines a dystopian, post-war society where all children are taken to be wards of the state, and put in a military academy that serves as an indoctrination camp. The film centres around Niska (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers),… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Night Raiders (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Memoria is his first film made outside his home country of Thailand. But the film, which is set in Colombia and unfolds through a mix of English and Spanish, still feels at one with the rest of his filmography. Tilda… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Memoria (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Julia Ducournau’s Titane surprised a lot of people when it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes a few months ago, becoming not only the second female-directed film to win, but also the rare genre flick to take home the top prize. Now that I’ve seen the film I… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Titane (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There was always some question as to how French filmmaker Céline Sciamma would follow up her acclaimed 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which has been lauded by many as one of the finest films of the past decade. Now we have the answer with Petite… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Petite Maman (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) In his unconventional but excellent new documentary Flee, Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen interviews his high school friend Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee who reveals for the first time the harrowing story of how he escaped Afghanistan as a child and fled to Europe. The twist is that… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Flee (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado This is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release. For my full thoughts on the film itself, including my star rating, please read my original 3.5 star review right here. After a long fan campaign to #ReleasetheSnyderCut, Zack Snyder’s original cut of Justice League was finally released earlier this year on… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Zack Snyder’s Justice League
By John Corrado September 8th marks the 55th anniversary of when Star Trek first premiered on television screens in 1966, with Gene Roddenberry’s classic sci-fi series launching a still-going franchise spanning TV series and movies. In honour of the occasion, Paramount is releasing Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection on 4K Ultra HD this week,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Star Trek: The Original 4-Movie Collection
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Billie Eilish is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet at the moment, and now she has her own concert film in the form of Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles. Premiering on Disney+ today, the film serves as a companion piece to… Read More Disney+ Review: Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) As we enter Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the studio is branching out to bring some of their lesser known comic book characters to the screen, and with it comes the chance to further diversify their slate of cinematic superheroes. Such is the case with Shang-Chi… Read More Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
By John Corrado This is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release. For my full thoughts on the film itself, including my star rating, please read my original review right here. In the Heights, director Jon M. Chu’s big screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre-Hamilton musical, is receiving a physical media release this week… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: In the Heights
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A followup to the 2018 film Peter Rabbit, which served as a modernized adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s classic books, Peter Rabbit 2 is a bigger in scope and more self-aware sequel. It also addresses some of the problems of the first one (which I still kinda liked, by… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Peter Rabbit 2
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Sean Penn’s latest film as a director, and the first that he stars in as well, Flag Day is based on journalist Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life. The book, which has been adapted for the screen with mixed results… Read More Review: Flag Day
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) What’s the difference between “real” friends and “vacation” friends? The former stick by you through thick and thin, where as the latter you befriend for a limited amount of time, fully expecting the interactions to be transitory. But what happens if vacation friends come back into your life… Read More Review: Vacation Friends
The Joy of Movies 