By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The opening scene of Elle will test your tolerance for everything that comes after. Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) lies on the floor of her house screaming, with her clothes torn, legs bloodied and broken dishes surrounding her head, as a masked intruder brutally rapes her. A grey cat… Read More Blu-ray Review: Elle
By John Corrado The Canadian Film Fest is back again and, dare I say, bigger than ever. For starters this year, the festival has moved from The Royal Cinema to Scotiabank, and will be running for a full five days, up from the previous four. The festival is also boasting its largest ever lineup of ten… Read More Previewing the 2017 Canadian Film Fest
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest from veteran Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald, Weirdos is an endlessly charming and surprisingly touching coming of age story, that finds the director in top form delivering one of his best and most heartfelt films. The year is 1976, and Kit (Dylan Authors) and his best friend Alice… Read More Review: Weirdos
Beauty and the Beast Review By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) There is perhaps no bigger test as to the resilience of Disney’s current trend of doing live action remakes of their animated classics than Beauty and the Beast. This is a pretty much beat for beat recreation of their iconic 1991 release, a film so beloved… Read More Three Views: Beauty and the Beast
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By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) After the death of his young daughter, Howard (Will Smith) has become withdrawn in his job at the New York ad agency that he helped found, spending his time writing angry letters to abstractions like Love, Time and Death, while his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 ★★ (out of 4) Some films really feel like they are trying too hard to please, and The Last Word is guilty of this. This is the sort of cliche-riddled Sundance dramedy that follows its formula to a tee, trying to tackle potentially poignant subject matter through a sunny disposition. The film feels… Read More Review: The Last Word
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The most revealing character moment in Hello Destroyer comes when star hockey player Tyson Burr (Jared Abrahmson) lies in a dimly lit hotel room, icing his knuckles after a fight during the game, and tells one of his teammates about how he could never stand silence as a child.… Read More Review: Hello Destroyer
By John Corrado Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is a restless teenager in the South Pacific who wants to follow in the footsteps of her explorer ancestors. When the crops on their island start to die due to an ancient curse, she sets out on an ocean journey in search of demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), in order to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Moana
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The easiest way to describe Before I Fall would be as a sort of YA Groundhog Day, but this richly textured and wholly engaging high school time loop drama still has enough originality and smarts to become something really good on its own terms. It’s “Cupid’s Day,” and Samantha… Read More Review: Before I Fall
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
Get Out Review By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) have been dating for several months, and the time has finally come for him to meet her parents. But he is black and she is white, and Chris is worried about how her rich and very… Read More Three Views: Get Out
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is a young girl who is kept locked up in a cell, being fed worms and strapped to a wheelchair so she can attend classes with her sympathetic teacher, Ms. Justineau (Gemma Arterton). You see, human civilization has been all but destroyed by a zombie… Read More Review: The Girl With All The Gifts
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 To mark the release of the new live action Beauty and the Beast next month, Disney is hosting a special exhibit at Casa Loma in Toronto this weekend. We got the chance to preview the exhibit last night at a special event, complete with an aerial show and ballroom dance, and the whole… Read More #BeOurGuestTO: Beauty and the Beast Exhibit at Casa Loma
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Taking a very meta approach to exploring its material, My Scientology Movie becomes just as much about the intense blowbacks that come with trying to make a documentary about Scientology, as it is about the infamous organization and its cultish ideology. The film follows the BBC’s Louis Theroux as he tries to investigate… Read More Review: My Scientology Movie
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