By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Kate Conklin (Gillian Jacobs), the main character in the new indie dramedy I Used to Go Here, is a writer in her mid-thirties who has just published her first novel, only to have her book tour cancelled by the publisher due to poor sales. With the man she… Read More VOD Review: I Used to Go Here
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Pitched somewhere between horror movie, psychological thriller, dark comedy, and hallucinatory fever dream, while refusing to settle for any single one of those things, She Dies Tomorrow functions as an intriguing look at anxiety and mass hysteria. Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, an actor who starred in… Read More VOD Review: She Dies Tomorrow
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) First published in 1911, British author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s novel The Secret Garden has been adapted for the big and small screen numerous times over the years, with the most famous adaptations being the movie versions that were released in 1949 and 1993. This story, which… Read More VOD Review: The Secret Garden
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Jay Baruchel, dipping his toes into the horror genre following his 2017 directorial debut Goon: Last of the Enforcers, Random Acts of Violence explores what happens when the work of an artist starts to inspire shocking acts of real life violence. Todd (Jesse Williams) is a… Read More VOD Review: Random Acts of Violence
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written, directed, edited, produced by and starring comic actor Romany Malco, Tijuana Jackson: Purpose Over Prison is a fairly amusing mockumentary that follows an ex-convict’s attempts to go from prison inmate to life coach. Tijuana Jackson (Malco) is a fast-talking inmate at a Florida prison who has dreams… Read More VOD Review: Tijuana Jackson: Purpose Over Prison
By John Corrado The Canadian drama White Lie, which had its world premiere at TIFF last year, is being released digitally and on demand this week on a variety of platforms. The film, which is the best one yet from young Toronto directors Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis, follows a young woman named Katie Arneson… Read More VOD Release: White Lie
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Scooby-Doo, the classic cartoon dog from Hanna-Barbera, gets a shiny new CG makeover in Scoob!, a disappointingly bland animated adventure that features some appealing elements but mostly feels uninspired. The film, which bypassed theatres and went straight to video on demand a few months ago and is now… Read More Blu-ray Review: Scoob!
By John Corrado I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about how, despite the fact that Amy Heckerling directed two of the most iconic teen films of all time, she herself sadly isn’t really a household name in the same way that some other auteurs of adolescent cinema have become. The first… Read More Blu-ray Review: Clueless: 25th Anniversary Edition
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Acclaimed independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, one of cinema’s finest surveyors of Americana, delivers one of her finest works yet with First Cow, a film that works as both a bracing frontier drama exploring themes of greed and early capitalism, and as a compelling, understated character study. The film,… Read More VOD Review: First Cow
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The latest from Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, Guest of Honour unfortunately follows in the footsteps of several of his other disappointing late career works; it’s a dramatic thriller that takes topical themes and buries them in an overly complicated and melodramatic package. The film tells the story of… Read More VOD Review: Guest of Honour
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on the true story of the singing group The Fisherman’s Friends, a group of locals from Port Isaac, Cornwall who became unlikely musical stars with their traditional renditions of old sea shanties, Fisherman’s Friends is a British feel-good film in the vein of The Full Monty and… Read More VOD Review: Fisherman’s Friends
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) James Odin (Adrian Glynn McMorran), a man with the ability to see glimpses of the future, ends up embroiled in a diamond smuggling ring while trying to stay one step ahead of the visions that he keeps having of his own own murder, in the ambitious indie sci-fi… Read More VOD Review: Volition
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The movie that changed the world when it bypassed theatres and went straight to video on demand earlier this year, Trolls World Tour is now arriving on Blu-ray this week in a special Dance Party Edition. The DreamWorks Animation sequel was all set to have a traditional theatrical… Read More Blu-ray Review: Trolls World Tour
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway show Hamilton, a wildly ambitious rap musical based on the life of America’s “ten dollar founding father” Alexander Hamilton, is indisputably one of the biggest pop culture sensations of the past decade. Now those of us who weren’t lucky enough to see the show… Read More Disney+ Review: Hamilton
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on his stage play of the same name, writer and director Drew Hayden Taylor’s engaging and informative documentary Cottagers & Indians, which premieres tonight on CBC, explores the fierce battle that is raging in the Kawartha Lakes between a group of mostly white cottagers and members of Curve… Read More Review: Cottagers & Indians
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The feature directorial debut of Canadian film producer Aisling Chin-Yee, The Rest of Us is a very solid little film that finds both drama and gentle humour in the interactions between its unique cast of female characters. The film centres around Cami (Heather Graham), the author and illustrator… Read More VOD Review: The Rest of Us
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, who had previously crafted Hollywood hits out of pulpy material with RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, released Showgirls in 1995, it was universally derided and became a massive critical and commercial flop. It’s not a surprise, since Verhoeven’s NC-17 stripper melodrama is… Read More VOD Review: You Don’t Nomi
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) I first discovered the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears last summer when I came across an episode entitled Shush Ninjas in which the show’s three protagonists, a trio of adoptive bear brothers named Grizz (Eric Edelstein), Panda (Bobby Moynihan) and Ice Bear (Demetri Martin), go to a movie… Read More Review: We Bare Bears: The Movie
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Written and directed by Jon Stewart, who left late night television to become a filmmaker, Irresistible is a political satire that is set in the current moment but feels curiously out of step. The film opens with audio of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton going at each other… Read More VOD Review: Irresistible
By John Corrado The 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, a somewhat fictionalized historical epic which was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won five, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and with it comes a brand new 4K Ultra HD Steelbook edition of the film. Directed by Mel Gibson, who won the Oscar for… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Braveheart: 25th Anniversary Edition Steelbook
The Joy of Movies 