By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Jean (Olunike Adeliyi) is a single mother who is back living with her own elderly mother (Maxine Simpson), raising two teenaged kids Tamika (Zahra Bentham) and Tristin (Micah Mensah-Jatoe) in… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Village Keeper (Discovery)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest mumblecore-inspired Toronto indie from micro-budget filmmaker Kazik Radwanski, Matt and Mara captures the rhythms of a unique dynamic between two old friends. Matt (Matt Johnson) and Mara (Deragh… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Matt and Mara (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novella The Sorrows of Young Werther which caused quite the stir in the late-1700s, Toronto filmmaker José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço’s easily enjoyable feature… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Young Werther (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest quasi-experimental genre-bender from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, Rumours is a mix of bizarre fever dream and political satire that pits the… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Rumours (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Set in a small fishing village in Newfoundland, writer-director Melanie Oates crafts a sort of modern day “Scarlet Letter” in her new film Sweet Angel Baby. Michaela Kurimsky stars… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sweet Angel Baby (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The feature debut of Ryan Cooper and Eva Thomas, who serve as co-writers and co-directors, Aberdeen is a mix of slice-of-life portrait and more serious melodrama. The film is named… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Aberdeen (Discovery)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In her latest film Paying For It, Toronto filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee crafts a tender adaptation of her former partner Chester Brown’s autobiographical 2011 graphic novel of the same name,… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Paying for It (Platform)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Do I Know You From Somewhere?, the debut feature from New Brunswick filmmaker Arianna Martinez, aims to capture that slippery, elusive feeling that you are pulling away from someone. And… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Do I Know You From Somewhere? (Discovery)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Seeds is an Indigenous B-movie thriller that serves as the feature directorial debut of actress Kaniehtiio Horn, who also wrote and stars in the film. Horn plays Ziggy, an Indigenous woman… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Seeds (Discovery)
By John Corrado The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The documentary A Mother Apart (which was one of the finalists for the Hot Docs Audience Award) offers a candid portrait of Staceyann… Read More #InsideOut2024 Review: A Mother Apart
By John Corrado The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In honour of her 18th birthday, Elliot (Maisy Stella) decides to do shrooms in the woods with her best friends Ruthie (Maddie… Read More #InsideOut2024 Review: My Old Ass
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto Barry Avrich’s Born Hungry is a wonderful portrait of Sash Simpson, and his journey from homeless street kid in India to top chef in Toronto. Sash’s earliest memories are of getting lost in India and being unable… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: Born Hungry
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto What if the designs on playing cards actually represent the answer to a long-lost mystery about the real cause of death for France’s King Charles VIII? This is the question that the Vancouver sleight-of-hand magician Shawn Farquhar… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: Lost in the Shuffle
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto Filmmaker Tova Krentzman offers an intriguing glimpse into the lives of lookouts in her documentary Fire Tower, introducing us to some of the people who spend six months of the year in towers a hundred feet above… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: Fire Tower
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto Director Josephine Anderson follows a girls curling team from British Columbia in her excellent and surprisingly poignant documentary Curl Power. But more so than just being a sports movie about the under appreciated nature of curling, her… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: Curl Power
By John Corrado The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto When Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban after the United States withdrawal in 2021, women almost immediately lost all of the progress that they had slowly made in the country. Girls weren’t allowed to continue school, and… Read More #HotDocs24 Review: An Unfinished Journey
By John Corrado Irena’s Vow dramatizes the inspiring true story of Irena Gut Opdyke (Sophie Nélisse), a Polish nurse who helped shelter a group of Jewish workers during World War II. At a factory in occupied Poland, Irena is put in charge of supervising a group of Jewish workers in the laundry, who wash and… Read More Movie Review: Irena’s Vow
By John Corrado In the opening moments of director Kim Albright’s film With Love and a Major Organ (which recently won the award for Best Feature Film at the Canadian Film Fest), Anabel (Anna Maguire) watches as a man stands on a cliff, rips his own heart out of his chest, and throws the glowing… Read More Movie Review: With Love and a Major Organ
By John Corrado The 2024 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 18th to 23rd, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto. The latest collaboration between director Sean Garrity and star Jonas Chernick, The Burning Season is a simmering romantic drama with a dark secret at its centre that starts at the end and… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: The Burning Season (Closing Night Film)
By John Corrado The 2024 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 18th to 23rd, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto. Director Audrey Cummings’ Place of Bones is an old school Western that plays as an affectionate riff on classic B-movies. Heather Graham stars in the film as Pandora, a frontier woman in… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Place of Bones
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