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
By John Corrado The 17th annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival kicks off tonight in Toronto, showcasing a total of six timely and relevant films over the next six nights, most of which played at other Toronto festivals over the past year. All of the screenings will be taking place at the Hot Docs Ted… Read More Previewing the 2020 Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Whether you agreed with her or not, there’s simply no denying that Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century, a writer whose often controversial opinions were sometimes hurtful and sometimes helpful, but always uniquely hers. Even when her contrarian views put… Read More Review: What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
By John Corrado The calendars have already turned over to 2020, but 2019 would not be complete without my annual countdowns of the best movies and documentaries of the previous year. Per tradition, I have once again broken up these lists, because I want to pay tribute to as many of these films as possible.… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2019
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, Western Stars, which was released earlier this year, is an introspective, often bittersweet concept album of sorts that tells the story of a fading Western movie star, and finds the iconic American rocker branching out to country music and performing with a thirty piece… Read More Review: Western Stars
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen died within three months of each other in 2016. The two never got married or had children together, but they shared a deep bond, with her directly inspiring at least two of Cohen’s classic songs (“So Long, Marianne” and “Bird on a Wire”).… Read More DVD Review: Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The possibilities of human genome editing through the discovery of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a specific family of DNA sequences, are explored in director Adam Bolt’s documentary Human Nature, which looks at the possibilities of a future where diseases or even certain traits could be cut… Read More Review: Human Nature
By John Corrado One of the highest grossing documentaries of the year so far, and a film that has found a way of connecting with audiences since it played at TIFF last year, The Biggest Little Farm is now available on DVD. The film follows a couple, director John Chester and his wife Molly, who gave… Read More DVD Review: The Biggest Little Farm
By John Corrado It’s been a long time coming, but after finally arriving in theatres earlier this year over forty years after it was originally shot, the Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is now available on DVD. The film documents the production of Franklin’s classic 1972 gospel album of the same name, which was… Read More DVD Review: Amazing Grace
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Phyllis Ellis, who takes an investigative approach to the material, the documentary Toxic Beauty explores how harmful ingredients like phthalates, parabens and even formaldihyde are lurking in a lot of the soaps, deodorants, creams and shampoos that many women use on their bodies every single day.… Read More Review: Toxic Beauty
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Toronto’s own Daniel Roher, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is an engaging and emotional look at Robertson’s own life and career as lead guitarist and main songwriter for The Band, as well as the rise and fall of the group itself. The film… Read More Review: Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Started as an eco-friendly alternative to the fuel-burning of Formula 1, Formula E is a racing series that has been going strong since 2014, in which the drivers compete against each other in battery operated cars, offering a carbon neutral alternative to the high emissions of traditional motorsports.… Read More #TIFF19 Review: And We Go Green (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Toronto’s own Daniel Roher, and carrying the distinction of being the first ever Canadian documentary to open the festival, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is an engaging and emotional look at Robertson’s own life and career as the lead guitarist and main songwriter… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The latest from Alan Zweig, Coppers finds the Canadian documentary filmmaker interviewing former police officers in Ontario, who have either left the force due to retirement or for other reasons. Speaking directly to the camera, the officers open up about experiencing PTSD, tough decisions they had to make… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Coppers (TIFF Docs)
