By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. Director Marie-Geneviève Chabot’s documentary Beneath the Surface follows three adult brothers who reunite with their father for a fishing trip in Quebec, in hopes… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Beneath the Surface
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. In horseback riding terms, a “long rider” is someone who has done over a thousand miles in a single equestrian trip. Director Sean Cisterna’s… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: The Long Rider
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. A few years back, Canadian filmmaker Jeremy LaLonde and actor Jonas Chernick collaborated together on the Canadian time travel comedy James vs. His Future… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Ashgrove
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. If you stumbled upon a bag of cash with no one around and no apparent owner, would you keep it for yourself, or report… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: A Small Fortune
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Tom Longboat was an Onondaga marathon runner from Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, who won the Boston Marathon in 1907. And it’s his ghost (portrayed by Asivak Koostachin) who inspires Beck (Dakota Ray Hebert), the protagonist of writer-director Zoe Leigh Hopkins’ inspirational sports dramedy Run Woman Run, to… Read More Review: Run Woman Run
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. Alexandre (Robert Naylor) is a firearms instructor working at the Canadian customs college, training customs officers how to fire guns that the government has… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: The Noise of Engines
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest starts tonight and runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. Tehranto, writer-director Faran Moradi’s crowdfunded feature debut, is a Canadian romantic dramedy that explores the very different experience of two Iranian… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Tehranto
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Written, directed, produced by and starring actress Agam Darshi, Donkeyhead is a Canadian dramedy that centres around a South Asian family and explores the tensions between four adult siblings dealing with their father’s impending death. Mona Ghuman (Darshi) is a failed novelist in her mid-thirties, plagued by self-doubt… Read More Review: Donkeyhead
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Shot in the Kingston-Galloway area of the East Toronto suburb that it is named for, Scarborough is an intimate yet expansive character drama that showcases the lives of several struggling families in a part of the city that is too often ignored. Based on the 2017 novel of… Read More Review: Scarborough
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) An Indigenous community in rural Alberta that is in the process of being surveyed for a mining project is the evocative setting for Don’t Say Its Name, a Canadian supernatural horror movie from first time feature director Rueben Martell. A shadowy mining corporation called WEC has just struck… Read More VOD Review: Don’t Say Its Name
By John Corrado ★ (out of 4) Defining Moments, which has been in the can for a little while now and is finally getting a VOD release this week, marks the final film role of Burt Reynolds, who passed away three years ago. But this is likely all it will be remembered for, if at… Read More VOD Review: Defining Moments
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest provocation by Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, who is known for exploring various taboos and sexual fetishes across his body of work, Saint-Narcisse is a film that deals in themes of self-infatuation, repression, scrupulosity and, well, incest. Set in Quebec in 1972 (FLQ graffiti is seen on… Read More Review: Saint-Narcisse
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The feature debut of writer-director Haya Waseem, who has made a number of short films, Quickening is a young adult drama told from the unique perspective of a young Pakistani-Canadian woman in the GTA suburbs. The film centres around Sheila (Arooj Azeem), who is in her first year… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Quickening (Discovery)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Frank Farelli (Pål Sverre Hagen) is an out of work sad-sack who is hired as the new “middle man” in the fictional town of Karmack, USA. The job involves being dispatched out to deliver bad news to residents when people die or accidents happen, a surprisingly common occurrence… Read More #TIFF21 Review: The Middle Man (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Anna (Alanna Bale), the immortal protagonist of Kicking Blood, is a young vampire who is intrigued by mortals. She works a day job in a library, and is friends with her dying, elderly co-worker (Rosemary Dunsmore), which is perplexing to the rest of her undead crew who only… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Kicking Blood (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Indigenous-led survival thriller Night Raiders is set in the year 2043, and imagines a dystopian, post-war society where all children are taken to be wards of the state, and put in a military academy that serves as an indoctrination camp. The film centres around Niska (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers),… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Night Raiders (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When I say that PAW Patrol: The Movie, a feature length spinoff of the popular Canadian children’s television show, is surprisingly pretty good, I feel like I should clarify that statement by adding “for a PAW Patrol movie.” I do not say this to throw any shade on… Read More Review: PAW Patrol: The Movie
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A Canadian animated film from the Quebec company 10th Ave Productions, Felix and the Treasure of Morgäa is an enjoyable family adventure movie set in the Magdalen Islands. The film follows a 12-year-old boy named Felix (Daniel Brochu), who believes that his fisherman father, who disappeared at sea… Read More VOD Review: Felix and the Treasure of Morgäa
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Based on the stage show Strike!, Stand! is a Canadian musical that dramatizes the events surrounding the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, an important moment in the history of labour rights in our country. The film, which was shot in Winnipeg and screened theatrically in Canada for the… Read More VOD Review: Stand!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Josiah Wilson was born in Haiti and adopted as a baby by a Heiltsuk father and a white mother, and raised as part of… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: One of Ours
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