By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Early on in director Stephen Fingleton’s Nightride, a new single take thriller shot in Belfast, two characters discuss Michael Mann movies. One character says Miami Vice is his favourite. The other scoffs slightly. Is he more of a Heat man? No, Mann’s debut Thief is his personal favourite.… Read More VOD Review: Nightride
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Julie (Renate Reinsve), the protagonist in Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, is not actually as bad as the knowingly hyperbolic title suggests. Well, not really, anyway. Sure, she makes some bad decisions and struggles with selfish choices, but the same is true of… Read More Review: The Worst Person in the World
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Chinese director Zhang Yimou, One Second is a pretty wonderful love letter to cinema itself and the travelling picture shows of his youth. Set in China in the 1970s, the engaging plot of One Second follows three people who are all after a reel… Read More #TIFF21 Review: One Second (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The latest work from Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti, who won the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room two decades ago, Three Floors is a watchable but somewhat mediocre multi-character drama that follows the denizens of an apartment complex in Rome as their stories collide, sometimes literally. The film… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Three Floors (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, Bergman Island is a very enjoyable love letter of sorts to the work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. The film is set on the Baltic island of Fårö, where the director lived and shot some of his most famous films, which… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Bergman Island (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Neil Bennett (Tim Roth) is a wealthy Englishman vacationing at a resort in Acapulco, Mexico with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two kids Colin (Samuel Bottomley) and Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan). Their holiday gets cut short when Alice receives a phone call informing them of a… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Sundown (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Memoria is his first film made outside his home country of Thailand. But the film, which is set in Colombia and unfolds through a mix of English and Spanish, still feels at one with the rest of his filmography. Tilda… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Memoria (Special Events)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Julia Ducournau’s Titane surprised a lot of people when it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes a few months ago, becoming not only the second female-directed film to win, but also the rare genre flick to take home the top prize. Now that I’ve seen the film I… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Titane (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There was always some question as to how French filmmaker Céline Sciamma would follow up her acclaimed 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which has been lauded by many as one of the finest films of the past decade. Now we have the answer with Petite… Read More #TIFF21 Review: Petite Maman (Special Presentations)
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) 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) The 2021 Hot Docs Festival is running virtually from April 29th to May 9th, all films are available to stream for audiences across Canada Shot during the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to fight against the… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: Faceless
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 Fabio Zaffagnini wanted to attract the attention of the Foo Fighters in hopes that the band would play a show in his hometown of… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: We Are the Thousand
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 The “ISIS brides” as they are called, the Western woman who travelled overseas from Europe and North America to join the terrorist group in… Read More #HotDocs21 Review: The Return: Life After ISIS
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature A dark horse contender for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, The Mole Agent is a low-key charmer of a film that follows an elderly gentleman in Chile who is hired to go undercover in a nursing home to investigate suspected mistreatment,… Read More Review: The Mole Agent
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature The title of filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin, notably the first film from Tunisia to receive an Oscar nomination, ends up being pretty self-explanatory. It’s literally about a man who sells his skin and has… Read More Review: The Man Who Sold His Skin
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature Director Derek Tsang’s anti-bullying film Better Days, which became a massive box office hit in China upon its release in 2019, is a sprawling teen melodrama that mixes elements of romance and crime drama to pretty good if at times… Read More Review: Better Days
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song – “Io Sì (Seen)” Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, The Life Ahead mainly serves as a late-career showcase for Italian actress Sophia Loren. Now in the twilight of her career, it’s easy to think of the film as a… Read More Netflix Review: The Life Ahead
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay An Indian entrepreneur’s rise from the bottom to the top of the class system is charted in filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s latest film The White Tiger, a dark and incredibly entertaining drama that kept me hooked from start to blistering finish.… Read More Netflix Review: The White Tiger
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Danish filmmaker Christina Rosendahl’s period piece drama The Good Traitor joins the wide range of films that have been made about World War II from the American and British perspectives, and sets itself apart by exploring Denmark’s complicated role in the conflict with the Nazis. The film serves… Read More VOD Review: The Good Traitor
