By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Billy Tipton was an American jazz musician whose career as a pianist and bandleader spanned from the 1930s to the 1970s. At the time of his death in 1989, it was revealed that Tipton was transgender, having been assigned female at birth but living and publicly presenting as… Read More #TIFF20 Review: No Ordinary Man (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The year 2016 was a very strange time to be on the internet. That’s the thought I kept having while watching Feels Good Man, director Arthur Jones’ documentary about Pepe the Frog, a comic strip character that somehow played a role in getting Donald Trump elected president. Pepe… Read More VOD Review: Feels Good Man
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on his stage play of the same name, writer and director Drew Hayden Taylor’s engaging and informative documentary Cottagers & Indians, which premieres tonight on CBC, explores the fierce battle that is raging in the Kawartha Lakes between a group of mostly white cottagers and members of Curve… Read More Review: Cottagers & Indians
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, who had previously crafted Hollywood hits out of pulpy material with RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, released Showgirls in 1995, it was universally derided and became a massive critical and commercial flop. It’s not a surprise, since Verhoeven’s NC-17 stripper melodrama is… Read More VOD Review: You Don’t Nomi
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Every year, over a thousand kids in Texas are selected to participate in Boys State, a conference run by the American Legion that teaches participants how to build a representative government over the course of a week. The boys are randomly split into two groups of six hundred each… Read More Review: Boys State
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) A selection of films from this year’s online edition of Hot Docs continue to be available to stream on their website. Tickets are $9 apiece, $8 for members, with screenings geo-blocked to Ontario. The full lineup can be found here. “If we have a husband, we won’t have a clitoris.… Read More Hot Docs Online Review: Breaking the Silence
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A selection of films from this year’s online edition of Hot Docs continue to be available to stream on their website. Tickets are $9 apiece, $8 for members, with screenings geo-blocked to Ontario. The full lineup can be found here. Tam and Bay have been living in Germany for… Read More Hot Docs Online Review: Mein Vietnam
By John Corrado This year’s special online edition of Hot Docs officially came to a close last night, and tonight the winners of the festival’s coveted Audience Award were announced during a live stream, which you can revisit on YouTube. The first place finisher was The Walrus and the Whistleblower, director Nathalie Bibeau’s film about… Read More Hot Docs Festival Online Audience Award Winners
By John Corrado While the in-person edition of Hot Docs was cancelled this year due to COVID-19, roughly 140 films that were set to screen at the festival were selected to stream online during a digital festival from May 28th to June 6th, with many titles being available for even longer until June 24th. Tickets… Read More Hot Docs Festival Online Reviews (Part 3)
By John Corrado While the in-person edition of Hot Docs was cancelled this year due to COVID-19, roughly 140 films that were set to screen at the festival were selected to stream online during a digital festival from May 28th to June 6th, with many titles being available for even longer until June 24th. Tickets… Read More Hot Docs Festival Online Reviews (Part 2)
By John Corrado While the in-person edition of Hot Docs was cancelled this year due to COVID-19, roughly 140 films that were set to screen at the festival will be streamed online instead from May 28th to June 6th, with some being available for even longer. Tickets are $9 apiece, $8 for members, with select… Read More Hot Docs Festival Online Reviews
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) With this year’s in-person edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: The Walrus and the Whistleblower
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The Painter and the Thief, director Benjamin Ree’s excellent documentary about friendship and the healing power of art, documents a coming together of two people that is so remarkable and interesting that if it had been fiction, it likely would have been accused of being contrived. The painter… Read More VOD Review: The Painter and the Thief
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) With this year’s edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot Docs… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: Influence
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) With this year’s edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot Docs… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: They Call Me Dr. Miami
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 1991, a group of eight men and women locked themselves inside Biosphere 2, a massive indoor recreation of the earth’s ecosystem built in the middle of the Arizona desert. The plan was to stay there for two years with no interference from the outside world, growing their… Read More VOD Review: Spaceship Earth
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) With this year’s edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot Docs… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: Meat the Future
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) With this year’s edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot Docs… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: Finding Sally
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) With this year’s edition of Hot Docs cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a selection of festival films are being given broadcast premieres every Thursday night from April 16th to May 28th on CBC, documentary Channel, and the CBC Gem streaming app, as part of the Hot Docs… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: 9/11 Kids
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto has come to be one of the biggest showcases of documentary cinema in the world, and it’s an event that, on a personal note, I look forward to attending every spring, as I have done since 2011. But this year, the… Read More Hot Docs At Home Review: Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art
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