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
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. One of the best surprises of last year, and an enduring hit at the box office,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A madcap reimagining of the Pied Piper story centred around a swindler cat and his band of talking rats, the European animated film The Amazing Maurice – playing in the Kids section at Sundance – serves as a colourful and often amusing adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s award-winning 2001… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: The Amazing Maurice
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) How long can you keep running from death before it catches up to you? That’s the surprisingly deep question being asked at the centre of DreamWorks Animation’s almost shockingly good sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. As a followup to 2011’s Puss in Boots, which was itself… Read More Review: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (official title) is a passion project for the Mexican filmmaker, who crafts an emotional stop-motion retelling of author Carlo Collodi’s classic book. The story of the wooden boy brought to life has been adapted for the screen countless times, perhaps most famously in Disney’s… Read More Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Strange World, the latest feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a throwback to old school adventure movies from the 1930s to 1950s that works as a somewhat slight but mostly entertaining animated film. The film centres around the Clades, who are a legendary family of explorers. The… Read More Review: Strange World
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Disney returns to the richly populated world of their 2016 animated film Zootopia in the aptly titled Disney+ series Zootopia+, a collection of six short films set in the animal metropolis. But rather than being a direct sequel to the movie, Zootopia+ is instead a collection of off-shoot… Read More Disney+ Review: Zootopia+
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Wendell & Wild, which is being released directly to Netflix for Halloween following its premiere at TIFF, is the latest stop motion film from director Henry Selick, the creative mastermind behind classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. This is Selick’s first film since the Neil Gaiman… Read More Review: Wendell & Wild (Netflix)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Conceived as a loose remake of the classic Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (which originally had the somewhat better title Blazing Samurai) is a gonzo animated film that often boggles the mind over how it even came to be. The result… Read More Blu-ray Review: Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Paramount’s animated film Rumble imagines a world of “monster wrestling,” where giant creatures fight each other for entertainment with the help of human trainers, and each city has their own massive kaiju to represent them. The most famous of these trainers was the late Jimbo Coyle (Carlos Gómez),… Read More Blu-ray Review: Rumble
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) DC League of Super-Pets is an animated comic book movie about Superman’s best friend; a super-powered dog named Krypto (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) who came to earth with him as a baby from the planet Krypton and continues to be his closest companion. Krypto has settled into a… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: DC League of Super-Pets
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Cars on the Road, which premieres on Disney+ tomorrow as part of their annual Disney+ Day programming, is a short episodic series from Pixar Animation Studios that finds trusty tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) reuniting for a road trip.… Read More Disney+ Review: Cars on the Road
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Minions: The Rise of Gru is a sequel to the 2015 film Minions, which was itself a prequel to the three Despicable Me films, showing the origins of those little yellow guys who speak gibberish and have taken the world by storm. And, five films deep into this… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Minions: The Rise of Gru (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) I Am Groot, the latest Marvel series premiering on Disney Plus, isn’t really a series at all, but rather a collection of brief little shorts featuring Guardians of the Galaxy breakout star Baby Groot (voiced once again by Vin Diesel) going on a series of adventures between the… Read More Disney+ Review: I Am Groot
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) DreamWorks Animation’s The Bad Guys, adapted from the book series by Aaron Blabey, is an animated heist movie that riffs on everything from Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction and the Ocean’s Eleven movies. And it’s a lot of fun. Filled with car chases, twists, and double crossings galore,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Bad Guys (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On opens with a tennis ball rolling around and bouncing down the stairs. We soon learn that our pint-sized protagonist Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate), a one-inch tall shell wearing pink sneakers who will steal our hearts over the next ninety minutes, is… Read More Review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Pixar’s Lightyear, a spinoff from the Toy Story film series that purports to show the origin story of the famous space ranger, opens with subtitles explaining that, in 1995, a boy named Andy saw a movie that made him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure, and “this is… Read More Review: Lightyear
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is technically the latest in Disney’s long line of live action reboots, reviving the fan favourite Disney Channel cartoon series. But in the hands of director Akiva Schaffer (from comedy troupe The Lonely Island), this one serves as a satirical sendup of the… Read More Disney+ Review: Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
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