By John Corrado ★ (out of 4) There are some movies that simply don’t work, and others that are such creative misfires that they almost become fascinating case studies in what not to do. The keyword is “almost.” The bafflingly bad space drama Lucy in the Sky is one such example, a film that swings… Read More Review: Lucy in the Sky
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest entry into the Conjuring franchise, and the third spinoff film focusing on the doll Annabelle who serves as the through line of the series, Annabelle Comes Home is a solid and entertaining sequel that does a good job of expanding upon the mythology of this cinematic… Read More Blu-ray Review: Annabelle Comes Home
By John Corrado It was always a risk for Pixar to make a fourth Toy Story movie. The original trilogy, which concluded at the start of this decade with Toy Story 3 in 2010, is undoubtedly one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, leading to questions of where the story could possibly go… Read More Blu-ray Review: Toy Story 4
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The possibilities of human genome editing through the discovery of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a specific family of DNA sequences, are explored in director Adam Bolt’s documentary Human Nature, which looks at the possibilities of a future where diseases or even certain traits could be cut… Read More Review: Human Nature
By John Corrado Today is October 3rd, which fans of the movie Mean Girls know to be the day when new student Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) was asked by her popular classmate and secret crush Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) what day it was. While last year’s Mean Girls Day was extra special because it actually… Read More Blu-ray Review: Mean Girls: 15th Anniversary Edition
By John Corrado This week, Paramount is releasing a new Blu-ray set that includes both Avatar: The Last Airbender and the followup series The Legend of Korra, bringing together two of the most popular and widely acclaimed animated shows of this generation in one gigantic collection. Running for three seasons between 2005 and 2008 on… Read More Blu-ray Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra – The Complete Blu-ray Collection
By John Corrado Arriving just in time for Halloween, and for the release of the new animated movie on October 11th, Paramount is releasing a new two movie collection that includes both The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values on Blu-ray this week. Both films were directed by Barry Sonnenfeld – who would go on… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Addams Family and Addams Family Values 2-Movie Collection
By John Corrado Originally airing in 1978 on NBC, the mini-series Holocaust is now available for the first time on Blu-ray in a new 2-disc set from Paramount. The series follows a fictional Jewish family throughout the 1930s and 1940s, unfolding over roughly a decade as the Nazis seize power in Europe. The Weiss family is… Read More Blu-ray Review: Holocaust
By John Corrado Originally airing over four nights on ABC back in 1994, the mini-series The Stand has now received a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release from Paramount to mark it’s 25th anniversary. Adapted from Stephen King’s mammoth 1978 bestseller, which is one of his longest books at over eight hundred pages, the series unfolds… Read More Blu-ray Review: Stephen King’s The Stand: Collector’s Edition
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Deep in South America, amidst the mountaintops and rainforests of Colombia, a ruthless band of teen soldiers hold an American woman (Julianne Nicholson) captive. They are known simply as the Organization, and when we first meet these rebels in the film Monos, their leader (Wilson Salazar), a short-statured… Read More Review: Monos
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling folk musician in the small English town of Suffolk, who finds himself in a complicated predicament when he gets hit by a bus and knocked off his bike at the exact same moment that a global blackout shuts off the world’s… Read More Blu-ray Review: Yesterday
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) When Men in Black: International was being released in theatres this summer, I kept forgetting that the movie even existed, and I say that as someone who grew up with the first two films in the series and was pleasantly surprised by the belated 2012 threequel Men in… Read More Blu-ray Review: Men in Black: International
By John Corrado The remake of Child’s Play, which many assumed would be another needless horror redo, actually ended up being one of the better surprises of the summer moviegoing season for me. It’s a twisted and often very enjoyable film that is more entertaining than it probably had any right to be, and it’s… Read More Blu-ray Review: Child’s Play (2019)
By John Corrado One of the highest grossing documentaries of the year so far, and a film that has found a way of connecting with audiences since it played at TIFF last year, The Biggest Little Farm is now available on DVD. The film follows a couple, director John Chester and his wife Molly, who gave… Read More DVD Review: The Biggest Little Farm
By John Corrado It’s been a long time coming, but after finally arriving in theatres earlier this year over forty years after it was originally shot, the Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is now available on DVD. The film documents the production of Franklin’s classic 1972 gospel album of the same name, which was… Read More DVD Review: Amazing Grace
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Following the outbreak of a mysterious illness that wiped out all of the grown ups, leaving just the teenagers behind, the town of Potter’s Bluff has divided into two halves. The East Siders are scrappy survivalist punks who get by on their own, and the West Siders have… Read More Review: Riot Girls
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Phyllis Ellis, who takes an investigative approach to the material, the documentary Toxic Beauty explores how harmful ingredients like phthalates, parabens and even formaldihyde are lurking in a lot of the soaps, deodorants, creams and shampoos that many women use on their bodies every single day.… Read More Review: Toxic Beauty
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Toronto’s own Daniel Roher, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is an engaging and emotional look at Robertson’s own life and career as lead guitarist and main songwriter for The Band, as well as the rise and fall of the group itself. The film… Read More Review: Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, following up his radical English-language biopic Jackie, Ema opens with an image of a street light on fire, and this provides an oddly fitting start to the film. Ema (Mariana di Girolamo) is a professional dancer who adopted a young son from… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Ema (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Set in a sleepy Irish town that offers little in the way of economic opportunity, Calm With Horses follows Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis), a physically imposing former boxer who struggles with anger management issues. Desperate for cash, he is hired to be an enforcer for the Devers, a… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Calm With Horses (Discovery)
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