By John Corrado Dream Productions, the new Disney Plus limited series “from the world of Inside Out,” presents somewhat of a departure for Pixar. It’s not only their first stab at episodic storytelling, but also done in the style of a mockumentary. The four-part series is presented as a “behind the scenes” look at Dream Productions,… Read More Review: Dream Productions (Disney+)
By John Corrado A24 has released the new full-length trailer for The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet’s 3-and-a-half-hour Vistavision epic, starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones in three of the best performances of the year. The full trailer is embedded below. I saw The Brutalist at TIFF (in 70mm with the intermission), and it’s… Read More New Trailer for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist
By John Corrado If you could radically change your appearance, would you? That’s the question at the centre of writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, a fascinating mix of piercing character study and absurdist, Charlie Kaufman-esque tragicomedy. Schimberg’s film is a sort of modern riff on Flowers for Algernon, the classic book in which a man with… Read More Movie Review: A Different Man
By John Corrado New releases for the week of December 6th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: The Girl with the Needle (Limited Release): This period piece has been gaining buzz since premiering at Cannes. Set in Copenhagen after WWI, it follows a poor factory worker (Vic Carmen Sonne) who becomes pregnant and gets entangled with a woman… Read More New This Week (12/06/2024): The Girl with the Needle, That Christmas, & More!
By John Corrado Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s highly disturbing but artfully crafted new film The Girl with the Needle is a period piece set in Copenhagen in the direct aftermath of World War I. The timeline is set early on when a town crier shouts out news of the armistice, right after we see… Read More Movie Review: The Girl with the Needle
By John Corrado New releases for the week of November 29th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Moana 2 (Wide Release): Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Maui (Dwayne Johnson) return for another ocean adventure in this sequel to Disney’s 2016 hit. It’s a perfectly adequate and at times fairly enjoyable sequel, but it also lacks much of the first… Read More New This Week (11/29/2024): Moana 2, Maria, Our Little Secret, & More!
By John Corrado Beatles ‘64, the new Disney Plus documentary from director David Tedeschi and producer Martin Scorsese about the Fab Four’s first visit to America, opens with footage of President John F. Kennedy. These scenes set the film up as a sort of broader time capsule of this specific era, but it also ties… Read More Movie Review: Beatles ’64 (Disney+)
By John Corrado The third entry in Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy depicting the interior lives of famous women (following the one-two punch of Jackie and Spencer), Maria is the Chilean filmmaker’s portrait of the Italian opera singer Maria Callas. Larraín aims to do for Callas what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana in his previous films, which boasted… Read More Movie Review: Maria
By John Corrado Disney’s Moana became a box office hit when it was released eight years ago in 2016. The film has enjoyed a strong shelf life with audiences since then, so it was inevitable that, for better or for worse, the studio would want to do more with these characters. Enter Moana 2, which began life as… Read More Movie Review: Moana 2
By John Corrado New releases for the week of November 22nd, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Gladiator II (Wide Release): Ridley Scott’s perhaps bigger if not necessarily better follow up to his Oscar-winning Roman epic Gladiator is a solidly crafted and entertaining legacy sequel. The story this time around focuses on a now-grown Lucius (Paul Mescal), who… Read More New This Week (11/22/2024): Gladiator II, Wicked, & More!
By John Corrado Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, the filmmaker’s Oscar-winning modern classic from 2000, is remembered for many things, including star Russell Crowe throwing his arms open in the arena and asking the immortal question, “are you not entertained?” It’s a moment that has become somewhat of a meme, but it’s impossible not to think about… Read More Movie Review: Gladiator II
By John Corrado Payal Kapadia, the filmmaker behind the 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, makes her narrative feature debut with All We Imagine as Light. Kapadia’s film, which was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year, is a touching and very heartfelt slice-of-life portrait of women in modern India. The film mainly focuses… Read More Movie Review: All We Imagine as Light
By John Corrado Disney has just debuted a new poster and teaser trailer for Pixar’s Elio, which was initially supposed to be released in theatres this past March, before being pushed back until next year. This is the first new footage of the film since the original teaser trailer that was released back in 2023… Read More New Teaser Trailer for Pixar’s Elio
By John Corrado Michael Keaton returns to one of his most iconic roles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a legacy sequel that finds director Tim Burton going back to the world of his 1988 film. The result is the filmmaker’s freest and most spirited work in some time, with a refreshing sense of playfulness and creativity to it.… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
By John Corrado New releases for the week of November 15th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Red One (Wide Release): J.K. Simmons stars as a fit Santa Claus who gets kidnapped, and Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans are the two guys tasked with bringing him back, in this big budget Christmas action comedy from director Jake Kasdan… Read More New This Week (11/15/2024): Red One, Memoir of a Snail, & More!
By John Corrado In 2009, director Adam Elliot, the Australian animator behind the 2003 Oscar-winning short film Harvie Krumpet, released his debut feature Mary & Max. The excellent claymation film had a lovingly hand-crafted feel to it, and told the tender story of the pen-pal friendship between a girl and an autistic man, which Elliot explored with… Read More Movie Review: Memoir of a Snail
By John Corrado Paramount has just released the teaser trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which is being pitched as the concluding chapter in the saga of Tom Cruise’s special agent Ethan Hunt. The film serves as a direct continuation of the 2022 film Dead Reckoning (which has since dropped “Part One” from… Read More Teaser Trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
By John Corrado New releases for the week of November 8th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Wide Release): Directed by Dallas Jenkins (creator of The Chosen), this adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s 1972 children’s book is a wonderful and meaningful family movie about the true meaning of Christmas. The story follows a group… Read More New This Week (11/08/2024): The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, A Real Pain, & More!
By John Corrado In A Real Pain, his sophomore feature as writer and director, actor Jesse Eisenberg crafts a sensitive, richly textured character study of two cousins reuniting for a Holocaust tour in Poland. This unlikely premise paves the way for a dramedy that takes the bones of a mismatched buddy comedy, as Eisenberg graciously shares… Read More Movie Review: A Real Pain
By John Corrado The latest “event movie” from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, Trap is basically pitched as a thriller set at a pop concert with a serial killer trying to escape the auditorium, and it delivers on this conceit. Josh Hartnett stars in the film as Cooper Abbott, a working class dad taking his daughter… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Trap
The Joy of Movies 