By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The ASD Band is a musical group made up of guitarist and vocalist Jackson Begley, lead singer Rawan Tuffaha, drummer Spenser Murray, and… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Okay! (The ASD Band Film)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Director Stacey Tenenbaum’s documentary Scrap opens in White, Georgia, which is the site of Old Car City. Known as the world’s oldest… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Scrap
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Back in 2018, filmmaker Jackie Torrens premiered her short film Bernie Langille Wants to Know Who Killed Bernie Langille at Hot Docs,… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Bernie Langille Wants to Know What Happened to Bernie Langille
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) At the heart of All My Puny Sorrows, the latest emotional work from Canadian filmmaker Michael McGowan (Saint Ralph, One Week, Still Mine), is the push and pull between one person not wanting to live and another trying to show them that there is a reason to go… Read More Review: All My Puny Sorrows
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director Martin Edralin’s debut feature Islands is a simmering and powerful portrait of the loneliness epidemic as seen through the eyes of Joshua (Rogelio Balagtas), a very shy Filipino immigrant living in Toronto. Joshua is a middle-aged man who still lives with his elderly parents. He’s never had… Read More Review: Islands
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)
The Joy of Movies 