By John Corrado Focusing on the events of the rebellion that was hinted at in the opening crawl of the original 1977 film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who is recruited by a group of rebel soldiers to help steal the plans for the Death Star, a super weapon that her… Read More Blu-ray Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

By John Corrado Directed by Mike Mills, loosely basing the story on his own childhood, 20th Century Women follows teenage protagonist Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) who is essentially being raised by the three women in his life, including single mother Dorothea (Annette Bening), their tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig), and his best friend Julie (Elle Fanning). With outstanding… Read More DVD Review: 20th Century Women

By John Corrado Chad Cutler (Michael Fassbender) lives with his wife (Lyndsey Marshal) and their two young kids in the same trailer park as his notorious crime boss father Cal (Brendan Gleeson).  Chad is desperate to break away from a life of crime and go clean, not wanting his son to grow up like him,… Read More DVD Review: Trespass Against Us

By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) are Jesuit priests in 17th century Portugal.  When they travel to Japan, both to spread their religion and also to locate their mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who was captured for preaching his beliefs and may have apostatized, they find their… Read More Blu-ray Review: Silence

By John Corrado A prequel to the Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them takes place in the 1920s and follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he arrives in New York from Hogwarts, and accidentally unleashes the creatures inside his magical briefcase. Serving as a polished piece of world building that is… Read More Blu-ray Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) is a Boston-born gangster in Prohibition era, who operates on a different side of the law from his Irish cop father (Brendan Gleeson).  Following a run in with the Italian mob, he senses a way to get rich by moving his business to Miami and trying to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Live By Night

By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Jim (Chris Pratt) is in a hibernation pod aboard a spaceship taking him on a journey to live on a new planet.  But when he mysteriously awakens ninety years too early, with no way of putting himself back to sleep and messages taking too long to reach earth,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Passengers

By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) After the death of his young daughter, Howard (Will Smith) has become withdrawn in his job at the New York ad agency that he helped found, spending his time writing angry letters to abstractions like Love, Time and Death, while his co-workers Whit (Edward Norton), Simon (Michael Peña) and… Read More Blu-ray Review: Collateral Beauty

By John Corrado Based on August Wilson’s stage play, Fences follows the slow unravelling of a working class family in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, as patriarch Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) struggles to provide for his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their teenage son (Jovan Adepo), while dealing with his own dashed dreams of playing baseball. Winning Viola Davis a… Read More Blu-ray Review: Fences

By John Corrado Taking place a week after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson), Jackie centres its main narrative around an interview between Jacqueline Kennedy (Natalie Portman) and a reporter (Billy Crudup), to offer a complex and nuanced portrait of how the First Lady and sudden widow meticulously managed her place in the public spotlight to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Jackie

By John Corrado Days after winning a trio of much deserved Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali’s immaculate performance as a kind drug dealer, Best Adapted Screenplay and finally Best Picture, Moonlight is now available on Blu-ray, and at this point I couldn’t recommend it any more highly. The story of a young… Read More Blu-ray Review: Moonlight

By John Corrado The most recent piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange introduces us to Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a neurosurgeon who injures his hands and searches for healing in Nepal, leading him to be trained in the dark arts of being able to manipulate space and time by the Ancient One (Tilda… Read More Blu-ray Review: Doctor Strange

By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) is a Canadian paratrooper who is sent to Morocco during World War II, and teams up with French Resistance fighter Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard) on a mission to assassinate the German Ambassador. Posing as husband and wife, the two embark on a steamy love affair… Read More Blu-ray Review: Allied

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) was an army medic from Virginia, who enlisted in World War II on the condition that he wouldn’t have to carry a rifle or take any lives.  Despite initially facing accusations of cowardice from his fellow soldiers, and the threat of being court marshalled, he become… Read More Blu-ray Review: Hacksaw Ridge

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) After becoming known as a hero in Iraq when his attempts to rescue Seargeant Shroom (Vin Diesel) are caught on camera, young private Billy Lynn (James Alwyn) is brought back to Texas with his fellow soldiers from Bravo Squad for a victory tour in 2004. The soldiers are set to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

By John Corrado Nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Arrival follows linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) who is recruited by the military to try and communicate with otherworldly visitors, after twelve giant egg-shaped alien spaceships land around the world. Carried by a moving performance from Amy Adams, whose lack of an Oscar nomination is… Read More Blu-ray Review: Arrival