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
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The third film in the Conjuring series, and the eighth in the franchise if you count all the spinoffs, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It offers another story taken from the case files of noted paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). This… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) “So may we start?” These are the words that the film’s cast, flanked by a chorus of backup singers, sings during the rapturous, single-take opening sequence of Annette, asking for the audience’s attention as they request to start the show. Taking us from inside a studio and out… Read More Review: Annette
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) An assassin sets out to avenge the death of her mentor and father figure in The Protégé, a passable but somewhat disappointing new action thriller from Casino Royale director Martin Campbell that is elevated by the casting of Maggie Q and Michael Keaton, but bogged down by a… Read More Review: The Protégé
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When I say that PAW Patrol: The Movie, a feature length spinoff of the popular Canadian children’s television show, is surprisingly pretty good, I feel like I should clarify that statement by adding “for a PAW Patrol movie.” I do not say this to throw any shade on… Read More Review: PAW Patrol: The Movie
By John Corrado Last week, Paramount released a new Blu-ray edition of Robert Altman’s 1975 classic Nashville on Blu-ray, which has been remastered from a 4K scan of original elements. A mix of music movie, character drama and political film, Nashville serves a mosaic portrait of two dozen different characters whose stories intersect over five… Read More Blu-ray Review: Nashville
By John Corrado Today is Friday the 13th, and Paramount has taken advantage of the date to release the new Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection on Blu-ray this week. The set features the first eight films in the classic 1980s slasher series bundled together in one case, with newly remastered versions of the original four.… Read More Blu-ray Review: Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection
The Joy of Movies 