By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A British journalist befriends an ISIS recruiter online in Profile, director Timur Bekmambetov’s surprisingly engaging thriller which takes place entirely on a computer screen. Bekmambetov is no stranger to this format, having produced the two Unfriended films and Aneesh Chaganty’s acclaimed Searching. While Profile is not quite as… Read More Blu-ray Review: Profile
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In 2019, Nickelodeon rebooted the fan favourite 1990s kids show Are You Afraid of the Dark? for a limited event series. The result was a surprisingly solid three-part miniseries that was successful enough to warrant renewal for a second instalment. The second season, subtitled Are You Afraid of… Read More DVD Review: Are You Afraid of the Dark? Curse of the Shadows
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Two lads end up on the run with a gangster’s stepdaughter and a bag containing fifteen kilos of MDMA in the Irish film Pixie, a mix of dark comedy and crime caper that is mildly enjoyable but ends up feeling like a patchwork of its influences. The two… Read More DVD Review: Pixie
By John Corrado Back in May, Paramount released the John Wayne 14-Movie Collection on DVD, a mammoth set featuring films from three decades of the iconic actor’s career. The 14 films included in the set are: Hondo (1953), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence… Read More DVD Review: John Wayne Essential 14-Movie Collection
By John Corrado Pixar’s latest film Luca, which was released exclusively on Disney Plus on June 18th, is now available across a variety of other Digital and physical media platforms as of this week. Set on the Italian Riviera, and loosely based on director Enrico Casarosa’s own childhood in Italy, Luca follows two young sea… Read More Pixar’s Luca is Now Available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) It’s an old maxim that sequels are usually bigger but not always better than the original, yet in the case of A Quiet Place Part II, it’s a little bit of both. The film is a follow up to writer-director-star John Krasinski’s 2018 film A Quiet Place, a… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: A Quiet Place Part II (Steelbook Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) David Lowery’s The Green Knight, the always interesting filmmaker’s bold reimagining of an Arthurian legend, is a film for audiences to luxuriate in. It’s a fantasy epic, sure, but unlike any other film bearing that description. This is not a swords-and-sorcery movie in the classic sense. There is… Read More Review: The Green Knight
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Tom McCarthy has had a very interesting career as a filmmaker, starting out with small indie films like The Station Agent and The Visitor, before moving on to receive a story credit on Pixar’s Up, and to direct the Oscar-winning Spotlight. McCarthy followed that movie up with the… Read More Review: Stillwater
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Disney’s Jungle Cruise isn’t the first movie to be based on one of their theme park attractions, with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise being the most famous example, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, either. What it is, though, is a pleasingly diverting film that… Read More Review: Jungle Cruise
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Del Close himself may have never achieved household name status, but odds are you’ve heard of Bill Murray, John Candy, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and any number of the other Saturday Night Live and SCTV stars who were trained in his school of long-form improvisational comedy. Close… Read More Review: For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) An 18-year-old kid named Michael (Ryder McLaughlin) has ambitions of becoming a pro skateboarder in skater and filmmaker Mikey Alfred’s feature directorial debut North Hollywood, which shares some common DNA with Jonah Hill’s 2018 gem Mid90s. Alfred served as a producer on that film, which also featured McLaughlin,… Read More VOD Review: North Hollywood
By John Corrado This week, Paramount is releasing both the 2009 film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and its 2013 sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation for the first time on 4K Ultra HD, in a pair of separately released combo packs that include the films on Blu-ray as well. They are arriving to coincide with… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest Disney+ show, Behind the Attraction, is a very good ten-part docuseries that sheds light on some of the famous attractions at Disney Parks and Resorts around the world. Five of the ten episodes in the series, which features Dwayne Johnson as one of its executive producers… Read More Disney+ Review: Behind the Attraction (First Five Episodes)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Morgan Neville’s new documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is as much about the life of the celebrity chef and TV personality as it is about his death. But the question of why Bourdain ended up killing himself in a hotel room in France in 2018… Read More Review: Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) When you hear the basic outline for the plot of Pig, and that it stars Nicholas Cage as a lonesome truffle hunter living in the woods who has his beloved pig stolen, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was another one of Cage’s gonzo action roles,… Read More Review: Pig
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Joshua Zemen sets out in search of the “52 Hertz Whale” in his documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, which follows Zemen and a team of marine biologists as they try to track the elusive whale’s signal across the Pacific Ocean. Because this specific creature… Read More VOD Review: The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52
By John Corrado Writer-director Cameron Crowe’s coming of age rock dramedy Almost Famous is 21 years old this year, and Paramount is marking the occasion by revisiting the film with a new 4K Ultra HD remaster, that comes in a limited edition Steelbook package. Based on Crowe’s own experience as a teenage writer, Almost Famous… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Almost Famous (Steelbook Edition)
By John Corrado Last month, Paramount Home Entertainment released new standalone editions of the three John Hughes classics Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful on Blu-ray, with collectible, limited edition Steelbook packaging. In terms of actual content, these are the same discs that were included in the John Hughes… Read More Blu-ray Review: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful Steelbook Editions
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Shot in black-and-white and entirely free of dialogue, Russian filmmaker Viktor Kosakovskiy’s documentary Gunda is an often hypnotic piece of experiential cinema that captures the day to day lives of a group of farm animals. The film, which boasts actor and noted animal rights activist Joaquin Phoenix as an… Read More VOD Review: Gunda
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Captain Ramadan is training the next generation of female weightlifters in Egypt, with his outdoor facility surrounded by chain link fencing on a street corner in the port city of Alexandria providing both a training ground and safe haven for girls who want to get into the sport.… Read More Review: Lift Like a Girl
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