By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Shot on a tight budget in Alberta, Guitar Lessons is a small Canadian drama from writer-director Aaron James (Hank Williams First Nation). The film stars Canadian country singer Corb Lund in his first leading role as Ray Mitchell, a former musician turned ornery oilfield worker who is befriended… Read More Review: Guitar Lessons
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin is an adaptation of Paul G. Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World. Shyamalan has crafted the material into a solid chamber piece thriller that is infused with Biblical allegories, and builds tension… Read More Review: Knock at the Cabin
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Director Mye Hoang’s Cat Daddies is a charming documentary that focuses on the bonds between a variety of men and their cats, and if you are in any way a cat person, it’s pretty irresistible. Like any good collection of cat videos, the scenes range from lighthearted and… Read More Review: Cat Daddies
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The feature debut of Benjamin Caron, a TV director whose credits include Andor, The Crown and, perhaps most notably, the final episode of Sherlock, Sharper is a slick A24 and Apple TV+ thriller that keeps shifting perspectives to keep us on our toes. The film opens with a… Read More Review: Sharper (Apple TV+)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Set in Australia at the turn of the new millennium, writer-director Goran Stolevski’s sophomore feature Of An Age is an engaging and poignant portrait of two young men, Kol (Elias Anton) and Adam (Thom Green), who connect over a whirlwind 24 hours in the last few weeks of… Read More Review: Of An Age
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the 31st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the first in Phase Five), and I’d have to give a few others a rewatch to say for sure, but it might just be the weakest and most disappointing entry yet in the long-running… Read More Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) In Marlowe, Liam Neeson stars as a private detective sniffing about the sleazy side of the movie industry in late-1930s Los Angeles, taking on a role inspired by author Raymond Chandler’s detective character Philip Marlowe, who first appeared onscreen played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep. The… Read More Review: Marlowe
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The directorial debut of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who cut her teeth in the romantic comedy genre writing films like 27 Dresses and The Devil Wears Prada, Your Place or Mine is a Netflix rom-com ready made for Valentine’s Day that delivers exactly what you expect from both… Read More Review: Your Place or Mine (Netflix)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A movie about the two female journalists who helped break the Harvey Weinstein story, She Said is an exploration of the still-recent events which led to the toppling of a Hollywood giant and the start of the #MeToo movement, that struggles at times to be as compelling as… Read More Blu-ray Review: She Said (Collector’s Edition)
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 ★★½ (out of 4) As far as self-produced vanity projects go, the inspired-by-a-true-story comedy 80 for Brady, which follows four old ladies who go to the Super Bowl to see their hero Tom Brady play, is a pretty enjoyable one. Produced by Brady, who also gives himself a small role playing himself,… Read More Review: 80 for Brady
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Canadian co-production Alice, Darling is a drama starring Anna Kendrick in the titular role of Alice, a career-oriented young woman in Toronto living with her emotionally abusive partner, a visual artist named Simon (Charlie Carrick). On the surface, Alice seems to have an enviable relationship, as she… Read More Review: Alice, Darling
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Made on a budget of $15,000 dollars, Canadian director Kyle Edward Ball’s lo-fi horror film Skinamarink has become something of a sensation, having now grossed $1.9 million in theatres. This success is all the more impressive considering the heavily experimental nature of the film itself, which eschews conventional… Read More Review: Skinamarink
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter is a documentary portrait of the brilliant but troubled celebrity chef, whose self-named Chicago restaurant Charlie Trotter’s became known as one of the best restaurants in the world during its heyday. Directed by Rebecca Halpern, Love, Charlie mainly… Read More Review: Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy star as a Jewish man and his future father-in-law in You People, a new Netflix romantic comedy from director Kenya Barris. Co-written by Barris and Hill, the film is first and foremost a cringe comedy about the racial divide in current America that… Read More Review: You People (Netflix)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The directorial debut of actor Jesse Eisenberg, When You Finish Saving the World (which had its premiere at Sundance in 2022) is a quirky comedic story about a self-absorbed mother and son who are struggling to reconnect. The son, Ziggy Katz (Finn Wolfhard), is a budding teenage singer-songwriter… Read More Review: When You Finish Saving the World
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Andrea Riseborough’s Best Actress nod for To Leslie was maybe the biggest surprise of this year’s Oscar nominations. Despite no real studio push behind the indie drama, she got in through a last minute campaign from her industry friends (including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon), who… Read More Review: To Leslie
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Liubiy, Iron Butterflies is a documentary that sets itself up as an investigation into the downing of Malaysian airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, which was accidentally shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile in 2014, killing all 298 people on board. But… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: Iron Butterflies
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
