By John Corrado Every year, I end up seeing a lot of really good documentaries, and 2017 was no different. Between Hot Docs and TIFF, there were a lot of non-fiction films that I really liked, and that’s what I want to highlight here. There were a few buzzed about films that I didn’t get… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2017
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A long awaited follow up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner, Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 takes place thirty years after the events of the original film. Replicants are still being treated like second class citizens, and now the blade runner jobs go to other replicants, who… Read More Blu-ray Review: Blade Runner 2049
By John Corrado Adapted from Stephen King’s classic horror novel, It follows a group of misfit friends in the 1980s who dub themselves the Loser’s Club, and have to take down a demonic entity that feeds on children and manifests as a terrifying clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), who terrorizes their town of Derry, Maine… Read More Blu-ray Review: It
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The directorial debut of master screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game dramatizes the true story of “poker princess” Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain). Molly is a professional skier whose athletic career falls apart after suffering a freak accident at the Olympics, to the disappointment of her father (Kevin Costner), who… Read More Review: Molly’s Game
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Seeking to solve problems of overpopulation and the rapid consumption and depletion of natural resources, a team of Norwegian scientists have discovered a process that allows people to shrink themselves down to the size of action figures, to reduce their carbon footprint. This is the basic premise behind… Read More Review: Downsizing
By John Corrado Following the wacky adventures of plastic toys Cowboy, Indian and Horse, A Town Called Panic is a stop motion animated series from Belgium that has gained somewhat of a cult following over the years. Now all twenty short films are available for the first time on Blu-ray in A Town Called Panic: The Collection, which… Read More Blu-ray Review: A Town Called Panic: The Collection
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Lloyd (Dave Franco) is a lonely teenager who is a misfit at school, but leads a double life as the powerful Green Ninja, fighting alongside a group of other ninja warriors and being trained by his wise old uncle Master Wu (Jackie Chan). But Lloyd is tired of… Read More Blu-ray Review: The LEGO Ninjago Movie
By John Corrado Telling three interconnecting stories that take place on land, on the water, and in the air, to offer an absorbing portrait of the successful attempts to evacuate 400,000 mostly British soldiers who were left trapped during the Battle of Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is a brilliantly crafted WWII epic that ranks among… Read More Blu-ray Review: Dunkirk
By John Corrado The latest from Darren Aronofsky, mother! follows a celebrated poet (Javier Bardem) and his wife (Jennifer Lawrence), who live in a decaying old house that she is fixing up to start a family, but their lives are upended when a mysterious visitor (Ed Harris) arrives at their house asking for a place… Read More Blu-ray Review: mother!
By John Corrado Before this long awaited third season of the 1990s pop culture phenomenon Twin Peaks premiered on Showtime earlier this year, channel president David Nevins promised us that it would be the “pure heroin vision of David Lynch,” and for better or for worse this is exactly what we get. Picking up exactly… Read More Blu-ray Review: Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series
Dunkirk Review By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) When Dunkirk opens, we watch as pieces of German propaganda are dropped from the sky over the head of a terrified young solider named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), who is trying to get across the occupied streets of Dunkirk, France amidst enemy fire, and make his way to the beach in… Read More Three Views: Dunkirk
Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Right off the bat, I want to address the fact that I found Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be good not great. Now that that is out of the way, I can get into a more nuanced take on Episode 8.… Read More Three Views: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Set in 1962, at the height of America’s Cold War paranoia, Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a magical fantasy romance that tells of the unique love between Eliza Esposito (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaner who works at a secretive government laboratory, and a mysterious sea monster (Doug… Read More Review: The Shape of Water
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Tommy Wisseau is the writer, director and star of The Room, an absurdly written, wildly overacted and unintentionally hilarious film that continues to perplex and delight audiences in equal measure. It holds the honour of being dubbed one of the best-worst movies of all time, and has amassed an incredible… Read More Review: The Disaster Artist
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Betty (Reid Asseltine) is a lonely young woman who has just started working as a security guard in a parking lot at a rundown Scarborough strip mall. But when she makes a pass at bartender Danny (Darrel Gamotin) while he is drunk, both of their lives start to… Read More Review: Wexford Plaza
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Ronnie (Grace Glowicki) has turned to alcohol as a way to cope after the death of her brother Garrett two months earlier, who her best friend Faye (Erin Carter) had briefly dated the year before, but broke up with when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. When Faye… Read More Review: Suck It Up
By John Corrado Rob Reiner’s Misery remains one of the best Stephen King adaptations nearly thirty years after it first came out, and now the folks at Shout! Factory have beautifully restored the classic 1990 thriller for a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray. The film tells the story of Paul Sheldon (James Caan), a bestselling romance… Read More Blu-ray Review: Misery: Collector’s Edition
By John Corrado Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) is a New York hustler who pulls off a brazen bank robbery with his developmentally disabled brother Nick (Benny Safdie). When Nick ends up getting arrested, and Connie evades capture, he gets in even deeper than before, needing to track down enough money to pay his brother’s bail by… Read More Blu-ray Review: Good Time
By John Corrado Every episode of the Canadian comedy series Letterkenny opens with a title card telling us that the fictitious Ontario town that gives the show its title has a scant population of five thousand residents, and “these are their problems.” The show follows Wayne (Jared Keeso), his younger sister Katy (Michele Mylett), and his… Read More DVD Review: Letterkenny: Season 1
By John Corrado Here’s a release that has been a long time coming. After premiering at Hot Docs in 2015, and then getting held back for two years due to some behind the scenes disagreements, The Sandwich Nazi is finally being released on a variety of VOD platforms today, including Vimeo on Demand, iTunes, Amazon… Read More VOD Release: The Sandwich Nazi
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