By John Corrado The title of Memory, the latest film from Mexican writer-director Michel Franco, takes on a few different meanings throughout the course of this tender, stripped down character drama. It refers to repressed memories and the lingering impacts of childhood trauma that Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) carries with her every day, as well as… Read More Review: Memory
By John Corrado Ava DuVernay’s Origin is an ambitious film that aims to adapt Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s bestselling non-fiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents for the screen. It serves as both an exploration of the ideas within Wilkerson’s book, and a dramatization of Isabel’s experiences while writing it. DuVernay’s film finds… Read More Review: Origin
By John Corrado The third film in DreamWorks Animation’s popular Trolls franchise, Trolls Band Together explores more of this vibrant animated world, while adding a slew of boyband jokes into the mix. The story revolves around Poppy (Anna Kendrick) discovering that her boyfriend Branch (Justin Timberlake) used to be a member of the boyband BroZone,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Trolls Band Together (Sing-Along Edition)
By John Corrado The 1999 coming-of-age sports movie Varsity Blues is now available for the first time on 4K Ultra HD, in honour of the film’s 25th anniversary this month. The film is set in West Canaan, Texas, a fictional all-American small town that revolves around their high school football team, the Coyotes. James Van… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Varsity Blues
By John Corrado New releases for the week of January 12th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: Mean Girls (Wide Release): This musical remake of the 2004 teen classic is actually pretty good. Tina Fey returns to write the screenplay (and reprises her role as the calculus teacher), in this redo of Cady Heron (Angoirie Rice) taking on… Read More New This Week (01/12/2024): Mean Girls, Freud’s Last Session, & More!
By John Corrado Freud’s Last Session is a period drama that imagines a fictionalized conversation between Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) two days after the start of World War II on September 3rd, 1939. The meeting takes place at Freud’s home in London, with the psychoanalyst and staunch atheist having invited… Read More Review: Freud’s Last Sesson
By John Corrado It’s been twenty years since Tina Fey released her high school satire Mean Girls in 2004, and now we have a new version of the modern teen classic being released in theatres. Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. (taking over for Mark Waters who directed the 2004 film), the 2024… Read More Review: Mean Girls
By John Corrado There were a lot of good movies released in 2023, but one of the best things about the year that just ended is that it finally felt like the movies were truly, fully back following the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a year when a talky, three-hour biopic like Oppenheimer could make nearly… Read More The Best Movies of 2023
By John Corrado New releases for the week of January 5th, 2024. Theatrical Releases: All of Us Strangers (Limited Release): This latest from writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) is a tender, dreamlike meditation on grief and loneliness. Andrew Scott stars as a lonely screenwriter who is given the chance to reconnect with his late… Read More New This Week (01/05/2024): All of Us Strangers, Society of the Snow, & More!
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest work from writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose 2011 breakout film Weekend remains an essential piece of queer cinema, All of Us Strangers is a tender, dreamlike meditation on grief and loneliness. Working from the 1987 Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, Haigh’s film is a ghost story… Read More Review: All of Us Strangers
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When Paul King stepped away from directing the third Paddington movie to direct a Willy Wonka origin story, after helming the critically acclaimed first two movies about the bear from Peru, it seemed like a curious move. But the moral of Wonka is that we never should have… Read More Review: Wonka
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Watching Killers of the Flower Moon, the absorbing latest work from master filmmaker Martin Scorsese, it’s impossible not to think about legacy, and the types of stories that he is choosing to tell in the twilight of his career. It’s obviously hard to confront the feeling that each… Read More Review: Killers of the Flower Moon
By John Corrado New releases for the week of December 29th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: Good Grief (TIFF Bell Lightbox): This is the emptiest Friday for new releases in recent memory (the big movies opened on Christmas a few days ago), with the only release on my radar being this directorial debut from Daniel Levy (Schitt’s… Read More New This Week (12/29/2023): Good Grief, & More!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Director Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple is a big screen adaptation of the Broadway musical that serves as a glitzy reimagining of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film of the same. Produced by Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey (who was Oscar-nominated for her breakout role as… Read More Review: The Color Purple
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Director Michael Mann returns with Ferrari, a biopic of Italian automaker Enzo Ferrari, that focuses more on his relationships and personal life. The film is set in 1957, a decade after Enzo (a silver-haired Adam Driver) opened the factory with his wife Laura Ferrari (Penelope Cruz) in post-War… Read More Review: Ferrari
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) George Clooney’s latest film as a director, The Boys in the Boat is a familiar but mostly enjoyable underdog sports movie that serves as another they don’t make ’em like they used to effort from the actor turned filmmaker, following his coming-of-age drama The Tender Bar. Adapted from… Read More Review: The Boys in the Boat
By John Corrado New releases for December 22nd and 25th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Wide Release): The DCEU officially comes to a close this week, with more of a whimper than a bang. Jason Momoa returns to the role of Aquaman, and James Wan returns to direct, in what I’m hearing… Read More New This Week (12/22/2023): Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, American Fiction, The Zone of Interest, & More!
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) Positioned as a prequel to the 2019 adaptation of the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary, the Paramount+ original movie Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is an example of a needless franchise expansion that doesn’t do enough with the source material to really justify itself. Set in 1969, the story expands… Read More Blu-ray Review: Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of The Exorcist: Believer. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. David Gordon Green’s legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer is being released on physical media this week, following a run in theatres… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Exorcist: Believer (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado New releases for the week of December 15th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: Poor Things (Limited Release): This latest from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (following his Oscar-winning The Favourite) is a weird and wonderful riff on Frankenstein, brought to the screen with some eye-popping visual style. Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a young… Read More New This Week (12/15/2023): Poor Things, Wonka, & More!
The Joy of Movies 