By John Corrado This week, Paramount is releasing the R-rated 1999 animated musical comedy South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut for the first time on 4K Ultra HD, in honour of the film’s 25th anniversary. Directed by Trey Parker and co-written by Matt Stone, the film finds the South Park boys getting corrupted after going… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
By John Corrado Making a sequel to Inside Out was always going to be a difficult task. The 2015 film is widely considered to be one of Pixar’s finest achievements, and is a late-stage masterpiece from the California animation studio. This leads us to Inside Out 2, a sequel that somehow manages to build upon… Read More Movie Review: Inside Out 2
By John Corrado This week, Paramount is releasing the streaming special South Park: Joining the Panderverse on Blu-ray. The 49 minute animated special from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone skewers everything from “woke” culture, to useless college degrees, multiverse movies, and token diverse characters in Disney reboots. The wide-ranging special, which premiered… Read More Blu-ray Review: South Park: Joining the Panderverse
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Kung Fu Panda 4. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The fourth film in the DreamWorks Animation franchise that began in 2008, Kung Fu Panda 4 is one… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Kung Fu Panda 4 (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado Garfield, that lazy, lasagna-loving orange cat from the Jim Davis comic strips, returns to the big screen in Sony’s aptly titled The Garfield Movie. Arriving two decades after the live action Garfield, which had Bill Murray voicing the sarcastic feline, this first fully animated theatrical feature works as an enjoyable caper, that… Read More Movie Review: The Garfield Movie
By John Corrado The stop-motion animated movie The Inventor is best described as an elaborate, lovingly crafted tribute to old school Rankin/Bass specials, inspired by the final years of Leonardo da Vinci’s life. The film begins in Rome circa 1515, where da Vinci (voiced by Stephen Fry) is a kooky inventor with a long white… Read More Movie Review: The Inventor
By John Corrado The latest animated work from co-directors Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, the filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated Chico and Rita, They Shot the Piano Player is an ambitious if uneven mix of animation and docudrama. The film opens at the Strand Book Store in New York City, where fictitious music journalist Jeff Harris… Read More Movie Review: They Shot the Piano Player
By John Corrado Jack Black returns as the voice of Po in this fourth instalment of DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda series, which began sixteen years ago now in 2008. It’s easy to say that, by this belated fourth go around, the series is starting to show some wear, and Kung Fu Panda 4 does… Read More Movie Review: Kung Fu Panda 4
By John Corrado The latest animated feature from Illumination (the studio behind the Despicable Me movies), Migration is the story of a family of ducks living on a peaceful lake who venture out into the world. And it’s honestly pretty cute. Mack (Kumail Nanjiani) and Pam (Elizabeth Banks) are parents to ducklings Dax (Caspar Jennings)… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Migration (Collector’s Edition)
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 Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The animated film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was one of the best surprises of… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Steelbook Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron (which had its North American premiere as the opening night film at TIFF) is an enchanting, gorgeously animated fantasy about life and death. The film is Miyazaki’s first since The Wind Rises a decade ago, which… Read More Review: The Boy and the Heron
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) It’s the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios this year, and what better way to celebrate this milestone than with Wish, a charming new musical fairy tale that harkens back to Classic Disney. The film (which opens with a storybook and those four magical words “once upon… Read More Review: Wish
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The rescue pups are back for another big screen adventure in PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, a worthy sequel to 2021’s surprisingly good PAW Patrol: The Movie. This new spinoff film from the popular Canadian children’s TV series and toys, which serves as another co-production between Nickelodeon, Paramount… Read More Review: PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. A dialogue-free animated film about the friendship between a dog and his robot set in 1980s New York, director Pablo Berger’s delightful new feature Robot Dreams… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Robot Dreams (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the latest big screen outing for the adolescent mutant turtles trained in ninjutsu who eat pizza and live in the sewers of New York City, and it serves as a rock solid reboot of sorts for the franchise. Directed by Jeff Rowe… Read More Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out in 2018, it really felt like the film was pushing the boundaries for big screen animation, mimicking the look of a comic book with its inventive and highly stylized mix of 2D and 3D animation. Now we have Spider-Man: Across the… Read More Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Elemental is the latest film from Pixar (their 27th feature), and it could also be described as the studio’s first romantic comedy. Set against the imaginative backdrop of a place called Element City, where air, fire, water and earth residents live, the film works as a charming mix… Read More Review: Elemental
By John Corrado In his over twenty years as an animator at Pixar, Peter Sohn has directed the short film Partly Cloudy, the feature The Good Dinosaur, and also lent his voice to characters in Ratatouille (Emile), Monsters University (Squishy) and Lightyear (Sox). Sohn is now directing Elemental for the studio, which is set to be… Read More Highlights from Pixar’s Elemental Footage Presentation and Q&A with Director Peter Sohn
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The solo debut of Chris Williams (who co-directed Bolt, Big Hero 6 and Moana for Disney), the Oscar-nominated The Sea Beast is a pretty good animated adventure movie from Netflix that imagines a world where pirates sail the high seas, killing sea monsters at the behest of the… Read More Review: The Sea Beast
The Joy of Movies 