By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out in 2018, it really felt like the film was pushing the boundaries for big screen animation, mimicking the look of a comic book with its inventive and highly stylized mix of 2D and 3D animation. Now we have Spider-Man: Across the… Read More Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Marvel Comics legend Stan “The Man” Lee gets the documentary biopic treatment in Stan Lee, an officially sanctioned project that is premiering on Disney Plus. Born Stanley Martin Lieber, and coming of age during the Great Depression in New York City, the film charts how he got his… Read More Review: Stan Lee (Disney+)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Elemental is the latest film from Pixar (their 27th feature), and it could also be described as the studio’s first romantic comedy. Set against the imaginative backdrop of a place called Element City, where air, fire, water and earth residents live, the film works as a charming mix… Read More Review: Elemental
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest film written and directed by Zach Braff (Garden State, Wish You Were Here), A Good Person is an addiction drama that follows Allison (Florence Pugh), a young woman who becomes hooked on painkillers following a car accident. The film opens with Allison excited to marry her… Read More Blu-ray Review: A Good Person
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the seventh film in the big screen Transformers franchise, serving as both a prequel and soft reboot of sorts to the five Michael Bay movies, and it’s one of the more watchable entries in the series, at least. While it doesn’t exactly… Read More Review: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Past Lives, the gorgeous directorial debut of playwright Celine Song, opens with its trio of main characters Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) sitting together at a bar, as an off-screen voice wonders what their connections are to each other. From here, Song’s… Read More Review: Past Lives
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A followup to the 2019 DCEU superhero film Shazam!, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a prime example of a sequel that feels bigger and broader in scope, while also offering greatly diminished returns. David F. Sandberg returns to direct this sequel, but a lot of the genuine… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Shazam! Fury of the Gods
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Creed III is the ninth entry overall in the iconic Rocky franchise, as well as the third film in the modern spin-off series focused on Apollo Creed’s son Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), and it mostly follows a well-worn formula. Directed by Jordan, making his behind-the-camera debut, the film… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Creed III
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Set in 1987, Before I Change My Mind follows Robin (Vaughan Murrae) a gender non-conforming kid who has moved to Alberta from… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Before I Change My Mind
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The Canadian coming-of-age drama Golden Delicious centres around Jake (Cardi Wong), a Chinese-Canadian teenager in his last year of high school in… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Golden Delicious
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Written and directed by Marie Clements, Bones of Crows is an ambitious Canadian drama that follows the life of a residential school survivor over many years, and the scars that remain from the trauma that she has experienced. The film spans multiple decades in the life of Aline… Read More Review: Bones of Crows
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The Spanish coming of age drama 20,000 Species of Bees, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: 20,000 Species of Bees
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) Since Bruce Willis has announced his retirement from acting due to his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, the film Assassin serves as his final role. As such, the movie is being sold under his name, but Willis is merely a supporting player in the sci-fi flick, which offers a… Read More DVD Review: Assassin
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In the documentary Supporting Our Selves, director Lulu Wei looks at the history of Community One, a Toronto organization that was founded… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Supporting Our Selves
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In his informative documentary Commitment to Life, filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Devine, Tab Hunter Confidential), explores the history of the… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Commitment to Life
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) What do you do when you accidentally overhear a loved one giving their honest opinion about something you’ve done? This is the basic setup for You Hurt My Feelings, the latest film from writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said). The main character is Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a writer in… Read More Review: You Hurt My Feelings
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) In Mission Kandahar (which is being released as Kandahar south of the border), Gerard Butler stars as Tom Harris, a covert CIA operative who must travel through Afghanistan with his translator Mo (Navid Negahban), towards an escape point in Kandahar. The film opens with Butler’s Harris on an undercover… Read More Review: Mission Kandahar
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In Cocaine Bear, director Elizabeth Banks takes the inspired by a true story premise of a bear in the 1980s who consumed copious amounts of cocaine that had been dumped from a drug runner’s plane, and fashions it into an absurdly gory and intentionally cheesy B-movie creature feature… Read More Blu-ray Review: Cocaine Bear
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney’s 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid is credited with kicking off the studio’s fabled Renaissance period, paving the way for a number of animated classics released throughout the 1990s. This makes it an obvious choice for a live action remake in the current IP-driven climate, considering that… Read More Review: The Little Mermaid
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director Laurel Parmet explores the push and pull between religion and sexuality in her confident debut film The Starling Girl, which centres around an inappropriate relationship between a teen girl and her youth pastor, and the circumstances that allow it to develop. Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a… Read More Review: The Starling Girl
The Joy of Movies 