By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by British screenwriter William Nicholson, who based the story on his own parents, Hope Gap is the sort of quiet drama that gets by almost entirely on its performances. The main characters are Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy), an old married couple who… Read More Review: Hope Gap
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest social realist drama from veteran English filmmaker Ken Loach, Sorry We Missed You explores many of the same themes of systemic poverty and the struggles faced by those who aren’t at the top of the economic ladder as his Palme d’Or-winning previous film I, Daniel Blake.… Read More Review: Sorry We Missed You
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Tom (Liam Neeson) and Joan (Lesley Manville) are an older married couple who share a quiet life together in Ireland, and how they both react in the wake of receiving devastating news is documented in the quietly moving drama Ordinary Love. They go for walks together and watch TV… Read More Review: Ordinary Love
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is an 18th century French artist who is brought by boat to an island where she has been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), ahead of her arranged marriage to a Milanese businessman. But Héloïse is resisting the marriage and doesn’t… Read More Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) “We’re not homeless,” Rosie Davis (Sarah Greene) insists to a family member partway through the Irish drama Rosie, taking issue with their use of the word. “We’re just lost,” she adds, as if trying to convince herself so she doesn’t have to face the truth. When we first… Read More Review: Rosie
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Symbolically named after Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 novel about poverty and injustice, and the beloved musical that it subsequently inspired, director Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a modern day fable about racial tensions and police brutality in contemporary France that explores how a series of events can bubble… Read More Review: Les Misérables
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) South Korea has proven to be a bit of a powerhouse in recent years when it comes to producing unique genre mashups, with the most prominent example of this obviously being the films of Bong-Joon Ho. Now we have The Divine Fury, a slick hybrid of exorcist film… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Divine Fury
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The latest from master filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory is a beautiful work filled with colour and emotion that is carried by a powerful, career-defining performance from Antonio Banderas, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his role. The story centres around an aging filmmaker… Read More Review: Pain and Glory
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Director Bong Joon-ho’s first film in Korean following his two English-language movies Snowpiercer and Okja, Parasite made history earlier this year when it took home the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes, becoming the first film from South Korea to win the award. And now that I’ve seen the film, I can… Read More Review: Parasite
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Deep in South America, amidst the mountaintops and rainforests of Colombia, a ruthless band of teen soldiers hold an American woman (Julianne Nicholson) captive. They are known simply as the Organization, and when we first meet these rebels in the film Monos, their leader (Wilson Salazar), a short-statured… Read More Review: Monos
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, following up his radical English-language biopic Jackie, Ema opens with an image of a street light on fire, and this provides an oddly fitting start to the film. Ema (Mariana di Girolamo) is a professional dancer who adopted a young son from… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Ema (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Shot on a shoestring budget in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, Crazy World is the latest action movie from Wakaliwood filmmaker IGG Nabwana. Starring Nabwana’s own kids and other locals, the loose plot involves the Waka Stars, a group of kids who are trained in kung-fu. When they get… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Crazy World (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Ling (Yeo Yann Yann) is a Mandarin teacher at a high school in Singapore, whose home life is increasingly depressing. She has been trying unsuccessfully for years to conceive a child, and is tasked with looking after her father-in-law (Yang Shi Bin), who is in the advanced stages… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Wet Season (Platform)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Yuma (Mei Kayama) is a 23-year-old woman with cerebral palsy in Tokyo, who dreams of being recognized as a manga artist. But the work that she does gets taken by Sayaka (Minori Hagiwara), a blogger who passes it off as her own and has gained a massive following.… Read More #TIFF19 Review: 37 Seconds (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first film that director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made outside of his native Japan, The Truth follows Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), a veteran French actress who has just published an autobiography. The release of this book prompts Fabienne’s screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) to visit her in Paris, travelling… Read More #TIFF19 Review: The Truth (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is an 18th century artist who is commissioned to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), ahead of her arranged marriage to a Milanese businessman. Héloïse is resisting the marriage, and doesn’t want to be painted, so her mother (Valeria Golino) has hired Marianne to… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is an aging filmmaker plagued by chronic pain and a sense of creative stagnancy. When a revival screening is booked of Sabor, the last movie he made before his career started drying up, Salvador reunites with the film’s star, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), whom he… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Pain and Glory (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A dark and brooding fairy tale set in the Balkan forests, Entwined follows a doctor named Panos (Prometheus Aleiferopoulos) who arrives in town to start a medical practise, much to the suspicion of the superstitious townsfolk. When he comes across a mysterious young woman, Danae (Anastasia-Rafaela Konidi), who… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Entwined (Discovery)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Pawel Pawlikowski’s tragic post-World War II romance Cold War is a deeply personal film for the Oscar-nominated Polish director, as the story is based on the European love affair between his own parents. The film unfolds over fifteen years, and charts the on-again, off-again love affair between Wiktor… Read More Review: Cold War
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) A black and white homage to the Mexico of his youth and the women who raised him, Alfonso Caurón’s Roma is a beautiful and haunting work of art, that serves as the filmmaker’s first Spanish language film since Y Tu Mamá También in 2001. The film unfolds through the… Read More Review: Roma
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