By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Back in 1969, after local religious authorities ordered that all of the totem poles be cut down as part of Canada’s widespread erasure of Indigenous culture, the celebrated Haida artist Robert Davidson became responsible for carving the first new totem pole to be put up in nearly a century in his village… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Now is the Time (Short Cuts)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Sandra Ignagni, Highway to Heaven: A Mosaic in One Mile is a mix of visual essay and short documentary that takes us inside the twenty five faith-based spaces that exist along the old No. 5 road in Richmond, British Columbia, including a variety of Christian churches,… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Highway to Heaven: A Mosaic in One Mile (Short Cuts)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Narrated by Rossif Sutherland, The Physics of Sorrow is an animated short film that finds an unnamed immigrant reflecting upon his memories of first falling in love as a boy with a girl from the circus, his abusive father, his time in the army in communist Bulgaria, and… Read More #TIFF19 Review: The Physics of Sorrow (Short Cuts)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Inspired by an article that was published in the Globe and Mail’s First Person series, and produced as part of a six episode digital anthology bringing these stories to the screen, Life Support is a short film that really captures the feeling of a brief, unexpected moment shared… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Life Support (Short Cuts)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, and his first one in English, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan is in some ways a departure for the young filmmaker, but it still feels like a work that is distinctly his. This is his attempt at making something… Read More Review: The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The general idea behind Mouthpiece, the latest film from Canadian director Patricia Rozema, is to show the many different sides of a character by having them literally be portrayed by two separate actors. Listed in the credits as Tall Cassandra (Amy Nostbakken) and Short Cassandra (Norah Sadava), Mouthpiece… Read More Review: Mouthpiece
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Ron Mann’s latest documentary, Carmine Street Guitars, takes us inside Rick Kelly’s custom guitar shop located at 42 Carmine Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. Many of their guitars are built out of reclaimed wood stripped from old buildings that has been salvaged from construction sites, and the… Read More Review: Carmine Street Guitars
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Franky (Josh Wiggins) is a popular high schooler who has his world upended after his 17th birthday party leads to a drunken but reciprocal sexual encounter with his best friend, Ballas (Darren Mann). The encounter leaves Franky struggling to define his own sexuality, and bullying amps up at… Read More Review: Giant Little Ones
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Lou (Michaela Kurimsky) and Chantal (Karena Evans) are best friends who are both trapped in the small Ontario town where they grew up, and they are trying to save up enough money so that they can hitch a ride to New York. But their plans to escape are… Read More Review: Firecrackers
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest from Canadian filmmaker Kim Nguyen, following his very good Arctic romance Two Lovers and a Bear and the Oscar-nominated War Witch, The Hummingbird Project is a flawed but mildly entertaining dramedy that is set in the financial sector. The film takes place in 2011 and follows Vincent… Read More Review: The Hummingbird Project
By John Corrado I have been covering the Canadian Film Fest for several years now. The annual festival – the 13th edition of which starts tonight – always offers an interesting and entertaining showcase of homegrown cinema, and this year is no different, screening nine features and twenty eight shorts over the next several days.… Read More Previewing the 2019 Canadian Film Fest
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Elliot (Josh Hutcherson) is a miniature horse who has always dreamed of flying with the reindeer, and when Blitzen (Martin Short) announces his retirement right before Christmas, leaving Santa (George Buza) scrambling to find a replacement to fill his spot on the sleigh team, he sees an opportunity… Read More DVD Review: Elliot the Littlest Reindeer
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from Canadian director Jeremy LaLonde, The Go-Getters is a dirty and raunchy low-budget comedy that follows Owen (Aaron Abrams) and Lacie (Tommie-Amber Pirie). The former is a drunkard living in the boiler room of his brother’s (Kristian Bruun) bar, and the latter a drug-addicted hooker whom he… Read More Review: The Go-Getters
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Taking place in the 1970s, The Drawer Boy unfolds at the Huron County farm shared by old friends Morgan (Richard Clarkin) and Angus (Stuart Hughes), who have their lives changed and old tensions brought back to the surface when a young playwright named Miles (Jakob Ehman) arrives from… Read More Review: The Drawer Boy
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A followup of sorts to his previous documentary Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, Barry Avrich’s The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret uses the revelations of sexual assault that took down legendary mogul Weinstein last fall as the jumping off point for an exposé on sexual abuse in Hollywood. Featuring interviews… Read More Review: The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, and his first in English, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan is still a work that is distinctly his, featuring the same soaring cinematography, musical interludes set to pop songs, and underlying themes of mother-son love as his other films. The… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and Anton Zalesky (Alexander Skarsgård) are cousins who hatch a scheme to make money by drilling a four inch wide tunnel running fiber optic cables from Kansas to New York that will speed up transactions on the Stock Exchange by a millisecond, but they face… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Hummingbird Project
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Lou (Michaela Kurimsky) and Chantal (Karena Evans) are best friends who are both trapped in the small Ontario town where they grew up, and they are trying to save up enough money so that they can hitch a ride to New York. But their plans to escape are… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Firecrackers
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Adapted from Lee-Anne Poole’s stage play, Splinters follows Belle (Sofia Benzhaf), a young woman who returns to Nova Scotia for her father’s funeral, forcing her to finally confront her overbearing mother (Shelley Thompson), who became distant after she came out as a teenager. But this time Belle has… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Splinters
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest short film directed by Zack Russell and starring Kayla Lorette – who previously collaborated on the fascinating She Stoops to Conquer which played at the festival in 2015 – 7A takes place in a single location and involves a young woman (Lorette) who is alone in… Read More #TIFF18 Review: 7A
The Joy of Movies 