By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. When Reyhaneh Jabbari was nineteen years old, she was sentenced to death in Iran for stabbing Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, to stop him from… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Seven Winters in Tehran
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Augusto Góngora is a celebrated former journalist in Chile, who protested against dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Paulina Urrutia is an actress and former… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: The Eternal Memory
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) EO, the Oscar-nominated latest film from 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, is an engaging portrait of a donkey travelling around Poland, seen mostly through the animal’s eyes. Styled as a modern cinematic counterpart to Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic Au Hasard Balthazar, the film opens with a show donkey… Read More Review: EO
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Director Edward Berger’s Oscar-nominated All Quiet on the Western Front is a new adaptation of German novelist Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I classic, which was most famously turned into an Oscar-winning 1930 film. Whether you categorize it as a remake of that previous Best Picture winner or… Read More Review: All Quiet on the Western Front
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The Oscar-nominated (and Golden Globe-winning) International Feature Argentina, 1985 is a compelling historical drama detailing the lengthy legal process that took place in Argentina in the 1980s to hold members of the country’s former military dictatorship to account for their brutal treatment of political dissidents. The film is… Read More Review: Argentina, 1985
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The first film in the Irish language to be nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars, The Quiet Girl is a tender and poignant coming of age film that shows a painfully shy young girl finally blossoming in the right care, and it’s a thing of quiet… Read More Review: The Quiet Girl
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Being made to feel self-conscious about who are as a child is a hell of a thing. Belgian director Lukas Dhont powerfully explores this feeling in his Oscar-nominated coming of age drama Close, which tells the story of Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav de Waele), two 13-year-old… Read More Review: Close
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Slow, a very good drama from Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze, begins with what feels like it could be a classic meet-cute. Elena (Greta Grineviciute) is a contemporary dancer hopping between sexual partners, and Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) is a sign language interpreter. They meet when she is teaching a… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: Slow
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The directorial debut of Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (The Broken Circle Breakdown), When It Melts is an adaptation of author Lize Spit’s book Het Smelt that explores childhood trauma through the eyes of a young woman finally confronting her past. Beatens takes an unflinching and provocative approach to… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: When It Melts
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Alice Diop, Saint Omer (France’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature) is an extremely understated and slow-moving legal drama that unfolds almost entirely within a French courtroom. The film centres around Rama (Kayije Kagame), a professor and novelist who travels… Read More Review: Saint Omer
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bardo (full title Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) finds the Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker in introspective mode and working in the Spanish language for the first time since Biutiful in 2010, to craft a semi-autobiographical tale of identity and belonging,… Read More Review: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The directorial debut of Korean actor Lee Jung-jae (the Emmy-winning star of Squid Game), Hunt is a political thriller set at the height of tensions between North and South Korea in the 1980s. Lee stars in… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Hunt (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq makes his feature debut with Joyland, firmly establishing himself as a very exciting new voice in international cinema. Adapted from his 2019 short film Darling, Sadiq’s film, which was awarded the Un… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Joyland (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The latest film from the currently imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, No Bears is a work of meta filmmaking that weaves together two narratives. Panahi casts himself as a filmmaker who is directing his latest work… Read More #TIFF22 Reviews: No Bears (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Paul Mescal, the breakout star of the Irish miniseries Normal People, delivers a poignant performance in the film Aftersun as a young father on vacation in Turkey. Calum (Mescal) is on holiday with his 11-year-old daughter… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Aftersun (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The latest from writer-director Mia Hansen-Love, One Fine Morning is another resonant and engaging romantic drama from the French filmmaker. Léa Seydoux stars as Sandra, a translator whose father Georg (Pascal Greggory) is suffering from a… Read More #TIFF22 Review: One Fine Morning (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider is an Iranian serial killer thriller that works as a tense game of cat and mouse between a murderer and a journalist, while also morphing into a piece of equally disturbing… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Holy Spider (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is a puzzle box of a movie from the Korean master that offers a beguiling mix of murder mystery and romantic melodrama, tied together through brilliant editing and narrative choices. The… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Decision to Leave (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Broker, the latest family drama from Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda working in Korea for the first time, opens in the dead of night with new mother So-young (Lee Ji-eun) leaving her baby in a box for… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Broker (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A lone toll booth operator (Michael Smiley) in the middle of Wales has been robbed of his cash, watch and sandwich by a gang of girls wearing balaclavas. When local traffic cop Catrin (Annes Elwy), starts digging into his claims, she starts to discover a criminal past he… Read More VOD Review: Tollbooth
