By John Corrado One of the most overlooked movies of last year was Edward Norton’s excellent, 1950s-set detective movie Motherless Brooklyn, which he directs and stars in as a New York City private investigator living with Tourette syndrome. The film seemed to come and go in theatres with not enough fanfare, but it’s arriving on Blu-ray… Read More Blu-ray Review: Motherless Brooklyn
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Robert Eggers established himself as a filmmaker to watch with his 2015 debut The Witch, a period piece horror movie set in the 1600s that played with a moody aesthetic and a strong sense of atmosphere. Eggers has more than lived up to this early promise with his… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Lighthouse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The zombie comedy is hardly a new invention, and we already have films like Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland and its recent sequel, the teen romance Warm Bodies, as well as the delightful musical Anna and the Apocalypse to prove it’s a genre mashup that can work. Now… Read More Blu-ray Review: Little Monsters
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Whether you agreed with her or not, there’s simply no denying that Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century, a writer whose often controversial opinions were sometimes hurtful and sometimes helpful, but always uniquely hers. Even when her contrarian views put… Read More Review: What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Symbolically named after Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 novel about poverty and injustice, and the beloved musical that it subsequently inspired, director Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a modern day fable about racial tensions and police brutality in contemporary France that explores how a series of events can bubble… Read More Review: Les Misérables
By John Corrado Eddie Murphy has been enjoying a bit of a resurgence lately, from his explosive comeback performance in Dolemite Is My Name to the upcoming Coming to America sequel set to arrive at the end of the year. Now one of Murphy’s most famous characters, the street-smart Detroit cop Axel Foley who ends… Read More Blu-ray Review: Beverly Hills Cop 3-Movie Collection
By John Corrado Ang Lee’s Gemini Man was one of the more curious big budget films to be released last year, and it’s arriving on 4K Ultra HD this week in a set that also includes a regular Blu-ray of the film. The film offers the Oscar-winning director a chance to play around with new… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Gemini Man
By John Corrado A sequel to the 2014 film, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil finds Aurora (Elle Fanning) preparing to marry Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson), leading to increasing tensions between her stepmother Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and the human world, with Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) waging an all-out war against the magical realm. The film is arriving… Read More Blu-ray Review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There were few films in 2019 that made as much pre-release noise as Joker did. Directed by Todd Phillips, in a radical change of pace from comedies like The Hangover and Old School, the R-rated film offers a dark and gritty take on the Batman villain’s origin story that… Read More Blu-ray Review: Joker
By John Corrado With 2019 officially in the rearview mirror, and 2020 already a few days in, it’s time for my countdown of the best movies of last year. It was a year that saw the release of some great movies, and also closed out a decade of moviegoing that saw the release of some… Read More The Best Movies of 2019
By John Corrado The calendars have already turned over to 2020, but 2019 would not be complete without my annual countdowns of the best movies and documentaries of the previous year. Per tradition, I have once again broken up these lists, because I want to pay tribute to as many of these films as possible.… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2019
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Some movies get better the second time you watch them and, for me at least, Uncut Gems, the latest film from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie following up their brilliant, live-wire 2017 thriller Good Time, is absolutely one of them. In fact, my rating jumped up by a… Read More Review: Uncut Gems
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Despite the fact that it takes place over a hundred years ago, 1917 is a World War I drama that has an immediacy to it, heightened by the fact that the film is presented entirely in the form of one single take, shot with stunning dynamism by the… Read More Review: 1917
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a semi autobiographical book about four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War, was initially published in the late 1860s, and it has been adapted for the screen multiple times since then. Perhaps the most famous of these adaptations include… Read More Review: Little Women
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest film from Blue Sky Studios, and the first to be released by Disney following the Fox merger, the long-delayed flick Spies in Disguise is an animated action comedy that follows the adventures of Lance Sterling (Will Smith), a superstar spy who gets turned into a pigeon… Read More Review: Spies in Disguise
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Terrence Malick used to take long hiatuses between his films, but the reclusive director has become quite prolific in the years since his 2011 magnum opus The Tree of Life, having released multiple films since then. Since The Tree of Life at the start of this decade, the filmmaker… Read More Review: A Hidden Life
By John Corrado Christmas is just under a week away. Hanukkah starts on December 22nd. It’s gift giving season, and here is my holiday gift guide, featuring a selection of recent movies, TV shows, books and even a board game that I can personally recommend. There’s something for everyone on this list, and all of… Read More 2019 Holiday Gift Guide
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Following the detour that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi in 2017, J.J. Abrams returns to the director’s chair with frustratingly mixed results in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the third and final piece of the new trilogy that he started for Disney with The Force Awakens in 2015.… Read More Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
By John Corrado Quentin Tarantino’s magnum opus, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a magnificent love letter to Los Angeles in 1969, following faded TV actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), reimagining real life events to reclaim the mythos of that crucial… Read More Blu-ray Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A co-production between DreamWorks Animation and Pearl Studio, the American animation company’s outpost in China, Abominable is the story of a girl and her yeti that plays like a minor response to the success of their How to Train Your Dragon films. Directed by Jill Culton, who has… Read More Blu-ray Review: Abominable
The Joy of Movies 