By John Corrado In Mile End Kicks, the very enjoyable sophomore feature from former Toronto film critic Chandler Levack following her excellent directorial debut I Like Movies, we follow a young music critic trying to figure things out in her early twenties. In many ways, Mike End Kicks plays like a companion piece to I… Read More Movie Review: Mile End Kicks
By John Corrado As a documentary filmmaker, Morgan Neville has focused on a variety of celebrity subjects, from Mister Rogers in Won’t You Be My Neighbor? to Anthony Bourdain in Roadrunner. And, in his Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom, he brought backup singers into the spotlight. The subject of Neville’s latest film is another behind the… Read More Movie Review: Lorne
By John Corrado Ryan Gosling received his first Oscar nomination two decades ago for playing a school teacher in the indie drama Half Nelson. Now, Gosling is playing a teacher once again in the sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary, which finds the Canadian actor delivering one of his very best performances. Adapted from the novel… Read More Movie Review: Project Hail Mary
By John Corrado The indie dramedy Fantasy Life serves as the impressive feature directorial debut of actor Matthew Shear, doing quadruple duty as writer, director, executive producer, and star. Shear stars in the film as Sam, an anxious young Jewish man in New York City who, in no short order, gets laid off from his… Read More Movie Review: Fantasy Life
By John Corrado The Drama, the latest film from Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, starts off feeling like a typical indie rom-com, complete with a coffee shop “meet-cute” between our protagonists Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) and Emma Harwood (Zendaya). But there’s something off about it. And if you’ve seen Borgli’s previous films Dream Scenario and Sick… Read More Movie Review: The Drama
By John Corrado In his previous documentary, the Oscar-winning 2022 film Navalny, Toronto filmmaker Daniel Roher presented a thrilling portrait of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Now Roher turns his attention to the equally timely topic of artificial intelligence in The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. Roher’s latest, which he… Read More Movie Review: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
By John Corrado Alpha is the third feature from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, whose previous films Raw and Titane both shocked and repulsed audiences while drawing critical acclaim. For Ducournau to follow up a film as thrilling and visionary as her sophomore feature Titane was always going to be a nearly impossible task, especially after… Read More Movie Review: Alpha
By John Corrado Elements of time travel and crime thriller collide in Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, an enjoyable action comedy that unfolds with a sort of clever-dumb logic that requires us to just roll with it. The plot, which unfolds across one night, is filled with twists and double-crossings. The titular players… Read More Movie Review: Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (Disney+)
By John Corrado The 20th anniversary edition of the Canadian Film Fest begins tonight and runs until March 29th at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto. I’ve had the privilege of covering this festival a number of times in the past, and I’m always impressed by the range of homegrown films on display. This year’s milestone… Read More The 2026 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 24th to 29th in Toronto
By John Corrado A homeless woman takes a Seattle tow truck company to court when the 1991 Toyota Camry she’s been living out of gets towed in director Stephanie Laing’s Tow, a based-on-a-true-story dramedy produced by and starring Rose Byrne. Byrne stars in the film as Amanda Ogle, a recovering alcoholic drifting around Seattle struggling… Read More Movie Review: Tow
By John Corrado The Radio Silence team of co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett return to the world of their 2019 horror-comedy Ready or Not with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a fun sequel that serves as a direct continuation of the first one. As in, this film literally opens right where the… Read More Movie Review: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
By John Corrado Undertone, the creepy, slow-burn directorial debut of Toronto-based filmmaker Ian Tuason, is the latest horror movie being put out by indie powerhouse A24. And it’s the epitome of a Canadian success story, with the distributor picking up the rights for seven figures in a competitive bidding war after Tuason’s film premiered at… Read More Movie Review: Undertone
By John Corrado Milla Jovovich, the star of the Resident Evil franchise, is now being given her own Liam Neeson in Taken or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo moment in Protector. That latter comparison makes some sense since this film comes to us from director Adrian Grünberg, who previously made the 2019 legacy sequel Rambo: Last… Read More Movie Review: Protector
By John Corrado Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is one of the big Oscar contenders this year, and the film is now available on physical media, including 4K Ultra HD. I praised this one when I saw it at TIFF (you can read my full review right here), and named it one of the best movies of… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Hamnet (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado Pixar already took us inside the mind of an adolescent girl in both Inside Out movies, and now the studio’s latest film, Hoppers, follows a teenaged girl who puts her mind inside a robotic beaver. The result is an incredibly fun animated film that is totally zany and often very funny (including… Read More Movie Review: Hoppers
By John Corrado A young girl is selected to bake a cake for her school in honour of President Saddam Hussein’s birthday in Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi’s debut feature The President’s Cake, which serves as a charming neorealist throwback. Hadi’s film is set in Iraq in the early 1990s, where, despite mass starvation caused by… Read More Movie Review: The President’s Cake
By John Corrado Dreams is the latest film from Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco, and his second collaboration with actress Jessica Chastain following their 2023 dementia drama Memory. In Dreams, Chastain takes on the role of Jennifer McCarthy, a rich socialite in San Francisco who is having a forbidden affair with a much younger ballet dancer… Read More Movie Review: Dreams
By John Corrado In Cold Light, the English-language debut of Quebec filmmaker Maxime Giroux, is a mix of crime drama and thriller that stars Maika Monroe as a young ex-convict in Alberta trying to get her life back on track, but being dragged right back into the criminal underworld. The film opens with Ava (Monroe)… Read More Movie Review: In Cold Light
By John Corrado Ghostface is back in Scream 7, the latest film in the meta slasher movie franchise that revolves around copycat killers putting on the mask to recreate the original murders in Woodsboro, California. I promise not to get into spoilers in this review, but without burying the lede, Scream 7 is fun. This… Read More Movie Review: Scream 7
By John Corrado In Midwinter Break, the feature directorial debut of British National Theatre director Polly Findlay, Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds star as an older married couple on vacation in Amsterdam. Stella (Manville) and Gerry (Hinds) are originally from Ireland, but have lived together in Glasgow for years. It’s clear from the opening scenes… Read More Movie Review: Midwinter Break
The Joy of Movies 