By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Who knew that the man behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch has such an interesting life? But this is one of the biggest takeaways of the charming I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story, which premiered at Hot Docs in 2014, and is finally opening at the… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Assembled from old home movies, interviews with his family and friends, and even animated segments taken right from his journal entries, the electric Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck offers the definitive portrait of this tortured artist, and a gripping exploration of drug addiction and untreated mental illness. After two… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) After moving to the United States and working as a sitcom writer, Rob Cohen returns to his native land of Canada after two decades, taking a road trip from Nova Scotia to Vancouver, and interviewing various Canadians in attempts to shine a light on what gives our country… Read More Review: Being Canadian
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest Earth Day release from Disneynature, Monkey Kingdom is arguably the best film yet in the studio’s ongoing series of impressively photographed wildlife documentaries, striking the perfect balance between adorable animals, and emotionally affective drama of the natural world. Taking place in Sri Lanka, the film follows a troop of macaques… Read More Review: Monkey Kingdom
By John Corrado Last week, the classic 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams was released for the first time on Blu-ray, through the Criterion Collection. The film follows William Gates and Arthur Agee throughout their high school careers, two inner-city kids in Chicago who dream of playing professional basketball, with the chance of elusive sports scholarships being the only hope their… Read More Criterion Release: Hoop Dreams
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) After questioning the meaning behind his own art, Ethan Hawke had a chance encounter with the elderly Seymour Bernstein, an acclaimed classical pianist in New York who gave up performing publicly decades ago to focus on being a teacher and composer. This dinner party meeting came at a… Read More Review: Seymour: An Introduction
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) After making waves with his work on The Corporation, director Harold Crooks turns his attention to the subject of technically legal offshore tax havens in The Price We Pay. After premiering at TIFF, and being chosen as one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2014, the documentary is opening… Read More Review: The Price We Pay
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Decades before whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks released classified information through secure digital networks, in 1971 a group of eight political activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole over a thousand private documents which they mailed out to newspapers. But much like the revelations… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: 1971
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A promising young dancer relegated to the lowest level of the company, Justin Peck was given the rare opportunity in 2013 to choreograph the 422nd new piece performed by the New York City Ballet. The process is showcased in the pretty good backstage documentary Ballet 422, which opens at the Bloor Hot… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Ballet 422
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) After premiering at the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival last year, the gutting and critically acclaimed documentary Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine is finally coming back to Toronto and opening at the Carlton today. Tickets and showtimes are right here. Matthew Shepard had just moved to… Read More Review: Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) After winning the Audience Award at Hot Docs last year, The Backward Class is finally opening at the Bloor Cinema today, and will be playing there until February 16th. Tickets and showtimes can be found right here. This heartfelt and highly recommended documentary follows the fifteen original students at Shanti… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: The Backward Class
By John Corrado I saw numerous documentaries in 2014, and there were a lot of great ones. Because of this, it was quite a challenge to narrow down this list, and ensuing selection of honourable mentions. But the ten documentaries I have finally chosen are an eclectic selection of what I consider to be the best… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2014
By John Corrado Fresh off receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, the excellent Last Days in Vietnam is opening at the Bloor Cinema this evening, and will be playing there until January 29th. Tickets and showtimes are right here. After the resignation of President Nixon, the North Vietnamese Army was gaining ground in Saigon, as… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Last Days in Vietnam
By John Corrado After playing to sold out crowds at Hot Docs, Advanced Style is opening at the Bloor Cinema this weekend, a feel good film that arrives just in time for the holidays. Tickets and showtimes, through to January 9th, can be found right here. Photographer Ari Seth Chen is the creator of Advanced… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Advanced Style
By John Corrado A thoroughly engaging look at what it takes to live on the edge of the planet, the spectacularly filmed documentary Antarctica: A Year on Ice opens today at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. Tickets and showtimes are right here. Although many workers and scientists populate the base camps and research stations over… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Antarctica: A Year on Ice
Every year, The Nutcracker ballet is performed all over the world, the music of Tchaikovsky providing one of the many sounds of the Christmas season. But what exactly goes into staging a ballet that features so many dancers and is often performed with a young cast? This is exactly what the confectionary documentary Getting to… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Getting to The Nutcracker
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Elliot “White Lightening” Scott dreams of being Canada’s first action hero, making amateurish and super low budget martial arts films with his long suffering girlfriend Linda Lum, starring his aspiring method actor friend Blake Zwicker. Shot on the fly around New Brunswick, the action films in question are… Read More Review: Kung Fu Elliot
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The North Dakota oil fields are taking their toll on the environment and natural landscapes, but they are also providing jobs for men struggling to find work. The men are grateful for the opportunity to make money, but they are left needing a roof over their heads, many… Read More Review: The Overnighters
By John Corrado Premiering at Hot Docs, Beyond Clueless is circling back to Toronto and playing twice this weekend at the Bloor Cinema, with tonight’s screening appropriately followed by a special showing of the 2004 film EuroTrip. Tickets and showtimes are right here. After John Hughes all but defined the high school genre in the… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Beyond Clueless
By John Corrado Two of the year’s best documentaries are opening this weekend with Art and Craft and Harmontown both starting limited runs at the Bloor Cinema, a pair of standouts from Hot Docs that come highly recommended. The former will be playing until October 16th, with the latter wrapping up a week earlier on… Read More Bloor Cinema Release: Art and Craft and Harmontown
The Joy of Movies 