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 Documentary filmmaker Jesse McCracken returns to his hometown of Markdale, Ontario in Grey Roads, to explore how the town has changed since he grew… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Grey Roads
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 Director Ann Shin explores the concept of “digital immortality” in A.rtifical I.mmortality, the opening night film of this year’s virtual Hot Docs, a thought-provoking… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: A.rtificial I.mmortality
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature Among this year’s many Oscar nominees from the streaming giant Netflix is My Octopus Teacher, a surprisingly touching nature documentary that captures the unexpected friendship between a scuba diver and an octopus, from captivating beginning to poignant end. The film… Read More Netflix Review: My Octopus Teacher
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature A dark horse contender for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, The Mole Agent is a low-key charmer of a film that follows an elderly gentleman in Chile who is hired to go undercover in a nursing home to investigate suspected mistreatment,… Read More Review: The Mole Agent
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Women make up less than three percent of all technical and production roles in the music industry, and in 2019, only five out of the top one hundred DJs were women. These are some of the surprising stats presented to us in director Stacey Lee’s documentary Underplayed, which… Read More VOD Review: Underplayed
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Five students from different parts of the world who all share a similar entrepreneurial spirit come together to compete at the 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards in the new National Geographic documentary Own the Room, which is premiering on Disney Plus this weekend. The five students that the… Read More Disney+ Review: Own the Room
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Six songs by famed Broadway lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim are used to provide deeper insight into his life and career as a whole in director James Lapine’s documentary Six By Sondheim. The film, which premiered on HBO in 2013 and has just been released on Blu-ray as… Read More Blu-ray Review: Six By Sondheim
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 2019, for the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, director and editor Todd Douglas Miller delivered Apollo 11, a documentary that brilliantly assembled never before seen archival footage of the event into a compelling narrative feature. Now Miller has returned to this historic event, or, rather,… Read More Review: Apollo 11: Quarantine (Digital Release)
By John Corrado A month ago, I shared my picks for the best movies of 2020, and now it’s time to make my selections for the best documentaries of last year. This list has been a long time coming, I know, and It took me a while to put it together, from deciding on the… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2020
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The other day, I had a chance to review the first two episodes of Inside Pixar, the very good new docuseries on Disney Plus that introduces us to some of the individuals who help tell the stories we all know and love at Pixar Animation Studios. The show… Read More Disney+ Review: Inside Pixar (Episodes 3, 4 & 5)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 2003, co-directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar released The Corporation, a documentary based upon a book by Canadian professor Joel Bakan that sought to psychoanalyze corporations as if they were people, and came to the conclusion that they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. Now, seventeen years later,… Read More Review: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Pixar Animation Studios is one of those places that I have always been fascinated by and have long dreamed of visiting. Not only am I a huge fan of their movies and characters, but as a studio, the place seems to be a bastion of creativity. The new… Read More Disney+ Review: Inside Pixar (Episodes 1 & 2)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Growing up, writer/director Trevor Cameron was always fascinated by stories of his great-great-great-uncle, Gabriel Dumont. A Métis leader and lieutenant to Louis Riel, Dumont is a legendary figure for his involvement in the North-West Rebellions of 1885, gaining him the nickname the “Métis Braveheart.” Wanting to learn more… Read More imagineNATIVE 2020 Review: Shadow of Dumont
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 1969, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau made crucial changes to the criminal code under Bill C-150, partially decriminalizing homosexuality across the country. It was a historic move that struck down archaic “anti-buggery” and “gross indecency” laws, with Trudeau’s famous musing that “there’s no place… Read More Inside Out 2020 Review: Sex, Sin & 69
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Spike Lee, David Byrne’s American Utopia is a film version of the Broadway show that the former frontman for the band Talking Heads staged in 2019 at the Hudson Theatre in New York. It was the opening night film at TIFF eleven days ago, and watching… Read More #TIFF20 Review: David Byrne’s American Utopia (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Alba truffle, which grows in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy, is considered to be one of the world’s rarest and most exclusive food items, and directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw take us into the unique world of the men who forage for them in their… Read More #TIFF20 Review: The Truffle Hunters (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Credited to directors Hao Wu and Weixi Chen, as well as another filmmaker who remains anonymous, 76 Days is a ripped from the headlines documentary made up entirely of candid footage that was shot in Wuhan, China earlier this year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The… Read More #TIFF20 Review: 76 Days (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Sam Pollard, the extensively researched documentary MLK/FBI sheds light on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive quest to take down Martin Luther King Jr., viewing the non-violent civil rights leader as a threat to the national order. Using the powers afforded to him at the Federal… Read More #TIFF20 Review: MLK/FBI (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Inspired by Thomas King’s autobiographical 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, the documentary Inconvenient Indian takes a very unconventional approach to adapting the source material. Using King’s book as the jumping off point, director Michelle Latimer has instead crafted a… Read More #TIFF20 Review: Inconvenient Indian (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Pete Souza, the former White House photographer for both Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, shares his story in the documentary The Way I See It. A behind the scenes figure who previously kept quiet about his own political leanings, Souza became more vocal in the wake of Donald… Read More #TIFF20 Review: The Way I See It (Special Events)
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