By John Corrado ★★★ (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 title of director Cody Sheehy’s thought provoking documentary Make People Better comes from the three words that James Watson, one of… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Make People Better
By John Corrado ★★★ (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. Early on in director Nils Gaup’s documentary Images of a Nordic Drama, art collector Haakon Mehren recalls the moment he first laid… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Images of a Nordic Drama
By John Corrado ★★★ (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 women-in-the-workplace comedy 9 to 5, which starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as three women dealing with office harassment… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Still Working 9 to 5
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Polar Bear is the latest Earth Day release from Disneynature, this time following a polar bear family in the Arctic, with a strong focus on how climate change is impacting their environment. Narrated by Catherine Keener, the film takes on the perspective of a young female “ice bear”… Read More Disney+ Review: Polar Bear
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) In her absorbing, aptly titled documentary President, director Camilla Nielsson intimately follows Nelson Chamisa, a young populist candidate running in Zimbabwe’s 2018 presidential election. Chamisa is a 40-year-old lawyer running for opposition party MDC Alliance, who stepped into the race when leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who was widely favoured… Read More VOD Review: President
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) First time director Max Lowe explores his family history in the National Geographic documentary Torn, offering a complex and moving portrait of paternal figures and how families heal in the aftermath of tragedy. Lowe’s father was famed mountain climber Alex Lowe, who died in an avalanche on Shishapangma… Read More Disney+ Review: Torn
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Malcolm Ingram, Clerk. is an entertaining documentary that looks at the career of filmmaker Kevin Smith, offering a complete portrait of him as director, podcaster and comic book fan. Through interviews with a number of people in Smith’s inner circle, the film takes us through the… Read More VOD Review: Clerk.
By John Corrado Last weekend, I published my list of the best movies of 2021. Now it’s time for my rundown of the best non-fiction films of last year. I spent the last week catching up on ones that I missed (including the one that became my number one pick, which I missed during its… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2021
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Truman Capote was an author whose real life persona loomed as large as the characters he wrote about in his stories. Capote’s distinctive high voice, short stature, and flamboyant personality made him stand out in his day, with his irredeemable penchant for gossip and being at the centre… Read More VOD Review: The Capote Tapes
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dear Future Children, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Hot Docs, is a documentary that focuses on a trio of young female activists fighting for their futures in different parts of the world. Director Franz Böhm introduces us to Rayen in Chile, Pepper in Hong Kong… Read More Review: Dear Future Children
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) In his unconventional but excellent new documentary Flee, Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen interviews his high school friend Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee who reveals for the first time the harrowing story of how he escaped Afghanistan as a child and fled to Europe. The twist is that… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Flee (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Del Close himself may have never achieved household name status, but odds are you’ve heard of Bill Murray, John Candy, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and any number of the other Saturday Night Live and SCTV stars who were trained in his school of long-form improvisational comedy. Close… Read More Review: For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest Disney+ show, Behind the Attraction, is a very good ten-part docuseries that sheds light on some of the famous attractions at Disney Parks and Resorts around the world. Five of the ten episodes in the series, which features Dwayne Johnson as one of its executive producers… Read More Disney+ Review: Behind the Attraction (First Five Episodes)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Morgan Neville’s new documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is as much about the life of the celebrity chef and TV personality as it is about his death. But the question of why Bourdain ended up killing himself in a hotel room in France in 2018… Read More Review: Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Joshua Zemen sets out in search of the “52 Hertz Whale” in his documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, which follows Zemen and a team of marine biologists as they try to track the elusive whale’s signal across the Pacific Ocean. Because this specific creature… Read More VOD Review: The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Shot in black-and-white and entirely free of dialogue, Russian filmmaker Viktor Kosakovskiy’s documentary Gunda is an often hypnotic piece of experiential cinema that captures the day to day lives of a group of farm animals. The film, which boasts actor and noted animal rights activist Joaquin Phoenix as an… Read More VOD Review: Gunda
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Captain Ramadan is training the next generation of female weightlifters in Egypt, with his outdoor facility surrounded by chain link fencing on a street corner in the port city of Alexandria providing both a training ground and safe haven for girls who want to get into the sport.… Read More Review: Lift Like a Girl
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Wolfgang Puck is credited as being the first “celebrity” chef, a title that he obtained by attracting a dedicated guest list of Hollywood stars to his restaurant Spago, before gaining a broader following through charming TV appearances, and building a food empire around frozen pizzas. Puck’s story is… Read More Disney+ Review: Wolfgang
By John Corrado Hot Docs has officially come to a close, with the final announcement of the coveted Audience Awards revealing the top twenty films that resonated the most with viewers during the virtual festival. In first place is director Franz Böhm’s Dear Future Children, which follows three young female activists in Chile, Hong Kong… Read More #HotDocs21 Audience Award Winners
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 Titled after his old motto “we are as gods and might as well get good at it,” the documentary We Are As Gods offers… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: We Are As Gods
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