By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Mass, the feature directorial debut of actor turned filmmaker Fran Kranz, is a film that explores a hot button topic (in this case mass shootings and gun control), and manages to do so in a way that feels honest instead of exploiting it for easy melodrama. The film… Read More Review: Mass
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dear Future Children, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Hot Docs, is a documentary that focuses on a trio of young female activists fighting for their futures in different parts of the world. Director Franz Böhm introduces us to Rayen in Chile, Pepper in Hong Kong… Read More Review: Dear Future Children
By John Corrado In 1982, Eddie Murphy made his big screen debut in director Walter Hill’s buddy cop movie 48 Hrs., playing smooth-talking convict Reggie Hammond to Nick Nolte’s gruff cop Jack Cates. It was well received by critics and became a box office hit, prompting Hill to reunite with Murphy and Nolte eight years… Read More Blu-ray Review: Another 48 Hrs. (1990)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Arriving a full two-and-a-half decades after the original Space Jam, which fused live action and animation to bring together the worlds of professional basketball and Looney Tunes, Space Jam: A New Legacy is a sequel built squarely around nostalgia. And not just nostalgia for the 1996 film, but… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Space Jam: A New Legacy
By John Corrado ★ (out of 4) Defining Moments, which has been in the can for a little while now and is finally getting a VOD release this week, marks the final film role of Burt Reynolds, who passed away three years ago. But this is likely all it will be remembered for, if at… Read More VOD Review: Defining Moments
By John Corrado The legacy of Mommie Dearest, and Faye Dunaway’s performance at the centre of it, encompasses the film’s rise from critical flop to commercial success and inadvertent camp classic. And it continues to exist as all three things at once. A modern reevaluation of Mommie Dearest, which is now celebrating its 40th anniversary… Read More Blu-ray Review: Mommie Dearest (1981)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first ever Halloween special featuring the Muppets, Muppets Haunted Mansion is a pretty irresistible crossover event that serves as both a return to form for Jim Henson’s creations, and also a fine tribute to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. The special is set in a Muppet version of the… Read More Disney+ Review: Muppets Haunted Mansion
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by German filmmaker Thor Klein, Adventures of a Mathematician is a biopic of Stanislaw Ulam (Philippe Tlokinski), a Polish-Jewish immigrant who worked on the Manhattan Project and was one of the scientists who helped develop the hydrogen bomb. Klein’s screenplay details how Ulam, who fled… Read More VOD Review: Adventures of a Mathematician
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The tagline for The Forever Purge, the somewhat mediocre fifth film in the horror franchise that started in 2013, might as well be “the purge in daylight.” The film’s main selling point (and the point that is brought up in the bonus features) is the opportunity to see… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Forever Purge
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) DreamWorks Animation’s 2017 movie The Boss Baby was essentially a one-joke film. Yes, I know, it was loosely based on a picture book by Marla Freeze, and set up a whole world of baby corporate leaders. But the purpose of the movie was really just an excuse to… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Boss Baby: Family Business
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Spirit Untamed, one of the latest animated offerings from DreamWorks, is a spinoff of both their 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and the Netflix series Spirit Riding Free, and it’s the very definition of generic entertainment made to capitalize on an existing IP. The film mainly… Read More Blu-ray Review: Spirit Untamed
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest provocation by Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, who is known for exploring various taboos and sexual fetishes across his body of work, Saint-Narcisse is a film that deals in themes of self-infatuation, repression, scrupulosity and, well, incest. Set in Quebec in 1972 (FLQ graffiti is seen on… Read More Review: Saint-Narcisse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Twenty years after the release of his breakout film Training Day, director Antoine Fuqua has crafted a different type of cop thriller in The Guilty, a Netflix film that is being given a short theatrical run before its streaming release. The film is actually a remake of director… Read More Review: The Guilty
By John Corrado This week, Paramount is releasing the 2001 sports drama Hardball for the first time ever on Blu-ray, in honour of the film’s 20th anniversary this month. Directed by Brian Robbins, who was hired off the success of his football drama Varsity Blues two years earlier, the film stars Keanu Reeves in the… Read More Blu-ray Review: Hardball (2001)
By John Corrado This week, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing the 1997 thriller Breakdown for the first time on Blu-ray, newly remastered from a 4K film scan. The film follows Jeff Taylor (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan). They are in the process of moving to California, when their car breaks down on… Read More Blu-ray Review: Breakdown (1997)
By John Corrado Last month, Paramount released a new Blu-ray edition of director Alan Parker’s 1976 film Bugsy Malone, an homage to classic Prohibition-era gangster movies that casts kids in all the roles and replaces bullets with whipped cream. The film is set in New York City circa 1929, and follows Bugsy Malone (Scott Baio),… Read More Blu-ray Review: Bugsy Malone (1976)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Chinese director Zhang Yimou, One Second is a pretty wonderful love letter to cinema itself and the travelling picture shows of his youth. Set in China in the 1970s, the engaging plot of One Second follows three people who are all after a reel… Read More #TIFF21 Review: One Second (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The feature directorial debut of writer-director Camille Griffin, Silent Night is a dark but compelling holiday twist on the “last night of the world” premise, that takes a bold, eerily believable high concept setup and applies it to a stripped down character dramedy set at Christmas. The film… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Silent Night (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) George MacKay plays a young man who believes he’s actually a wolf trapped in a human body in writer-director Nathalie Biancheri’s new film Wolf, which explores the concept of “species dysphoria.” And the film is fine. Neither the total mess nor the instant cult classic that it could… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Wolf (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is the filmmaker’s bittersweet cinematic memoir of growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. The story begins in the year 1969, and follows a young boy named Buddy (Jude Hill), a stand-in for Branagh, who lives on a mostly Protestant street in Belfast where the… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Belfast (Gala Presentations)
The Joy of Movies 