By John Corrado ★★★½ (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. Director Tracey Arcabasso Smith digs deep into her own personal life and family history in her documentary Relative, weaving a nuanced portrait of… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Relative
By John Corrado ★★★½ (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 ASD Band is a musical group made up of guitarist and vocalist Jackson Begley, lead singer Rawan Tuffaha, drummer Spenser Murray, and… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Okay! (The ASD Band Film)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (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. Director Cathryne Czubek’s documentary Once Upon a Time in Uganda takes us behind the scenes of Wakaliwood, the low-budget, high-spirited action movie studio… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Once Upon a Time in Uganda
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. Who knew racing pigeons was such a lucrative sport? Director Gavin Fitzgerald’s documentary Million Dollar Pigeons takes us into the increasingly competitive world… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Million Dollar Pigeons
By John Corrado ★★★½ (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. Director Stacey Tenenbaum’s documentary Scrap opens in White, Georgia, which is the site of Old Car City. Known as the world’s oldest… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Scrap
By John Corrado ★★★½ (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. Back in 2018, filmmaker Jackie Torrens premiered her short film Bernie Langille Wants to Know Who Killed Bernie Langille at Hot Docs,… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Bernie Langille Wants to Know What Happened to Bernie Langille
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. Swedish filmmaker Magnus Gertten’s new documentary Nelly & Nadine reveals the unlikely love story between Nadine Hwang, the Spanish-born daughter of a Chinese… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Nelly & Nadine
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)
The Joy of Movies 