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!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) While Steven Spielberg’s name doesn’t actually appear on Come Play, the new thriller about a monster who connects to our world through electronic devices, the film is produced by his company Amblin Partners, and the filmmaker’s influence is felt all over it. It’s the way that Come Play… Read More Review: Come Play
By John Corrado The idea of a primetime animated sitcom was very much a novelty when The Flintstones premiered in 1960. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera under their company banner Hanna-Barbera Productions, the show about the “modern Stone Age family” was the first “cartoon” to ever land a primetime slot. And it became… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Flintstones: The Complete Series
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Bong Joon-ho made history earlier this year when his movie Parasite became the first ever international film to take home the Oscar for Best Picture, a stunning win that was complimented by the South Korean filmmaker also winning the award for Best Director. It was a deserved victory… Read More Review: Memories of Murder (Theatrical Re-Release)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Did you ever wonder what that loveable snowman sidekick Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad) was doing in the movie Frozen between the time when Elsa (Idina Menzel) brought him to life while belting out “Let It Go” on the side of a snowy mountain, but before he met… Read More Disney+ Review: Once Upon a Snowman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Growing up, writer/director Trevor Cameron was always fascinated by stories of his great-great-great-uncle, Gabriel Dumont. A Métis leader and lieutenant to Louis Riel, Dumont is a legendary figure for his involvement in the North-West Rebellions of 1885, gaining him the nickname the “Métis Braveheart.” Wanting to learn more… Read More imagineNATIVE 2020 Review: Shadow of Dumont
By John Corrado Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 horror novel The Haunting of Hill House has been adapted for the screen a few times over the years, starting with Robert Wise’s faithful 1963 film adaptation The Haunting. More recently, Jackson’s novel provided the inspiration for Mike Flanagan’s 2018 Netflix series of the same name, which was… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Haunting (1999)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Aaron Sorkin has a way with words and a real knack for writing film dialogue, as we already saw, or rather heard, in his scripts for David Fincher’s brilliant Facebook drama The Social Network and Danny Boyle’s structurally inventive biopic Steve Jobs. Sorkin’s gift for writing memorable, rapid… Read More Netflix Review: The Trial of the Chicago 7
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Clouds, a new teen drama that was recently acquired by Disney Plus and is dropping on the streaming service today, is a biopic of Zach Sobiech, the young singer-songwriter with terminal cancer whose bittersweet folk-pop song “Clouds” became a viral hit in 2012 when he was seventeen years… Read More Disney+ Review: Clouds
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A dramatic revenge thriller set in the American suburbia of the 1950s, The Secrets We Keep follows Maja (Noomi Rapace), a Romanian woman who fled her home country following World War II, and has tried her best to forget the past. Maja has established a quiet life in… Read More VOD Review: The Secrets We Keep
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The most obvious comparison to The Curse of Audrey Earnsahw, Canadian filmmaker Robert Thomas Lee’s new period horror film which was produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada, would be The Witch. Like that 2015 film directed by Robert Eggers, Lee’s film is another work of folk horror… Read More Review: The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 1969, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made crucial changes to the criminal code under Bill C-150, partially decriminalizing homosexuality across the country. It was a historic move that struck down archaic “anti-buggery” and “gross indecency” laws, with Trudeau’s famous musing that “there’s no place… Read More Inside Out 2020 Review: Sex, Sin & 69
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following the death of his parents, Kit (Henry Golding) returns home to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to find a place to scatter their ashes, and discovers that he barely remembers the country that he was forced to leave as a young boy. Having grown up in… Read More Inside Out 2020 Review: Monsoon
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The year is 1995, and Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) has just moved to a small town in Illinois with his partner Aaron (Ari Cohen), seeking a new life for themselves and Aaron’s teenaged daughter Kayla (Jennifer Laporte). But it’s not long before Malik, who still hasn’t recovered from the… Read More Inside Out 2020 Review: Spiral
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Denis Theriault, expanding upon his 2014 short film of the same name, the six-part web series I Am Syd Stone follows a popular but washed up actor struggling with his sexuality during the production of a new film. The series begins with Syd (Travis Nelson), whose… Read More Inside Out 2020 Review: I Am Syd Stone (Web Series)
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