By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Director Cathryne Czubek’s documentary Once Upon a Time in Uganda takes us behind the scenes of Wakaliwood, the low-budget, high-spirited action movie studio… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Once Upon a Time in Uganda
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Who knew racing pigeons was such a lucrative sport? Director Gavin Fitzgerald’s documentary Million Dollar Pigeons takes us into the increasingly competitive world… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Million Dollar Pigeons
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Director Stacey Tenenbaum’s documentary Scrap opens in White, Georgia, which is the site of Old Car City. Known as the world’s oldest… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Scrap
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Back in 2018, filmmaker Jackie Torrens premiered her short film Bernie Langille Wants to Know Who Killed Bernie Langille at Hot Docs,… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Bernie Langille Wants to Know What Happened to Bernie Langille
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Swedish filmmaker Magnus Gertten’s new documentary Nelly & Nadine reveals the unlikely love story between Nadine Hwang, the Spanish-born daughter of a Chinese… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Nelly & Nadine
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The title of director Cody Sheehy’s thought provoking documentary Make People Better comes from the three words that James Watson, one of… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Make People Better
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Early on in director Nils Gaup’s documentary Images of a Nordic Drama, art collector Haakon Mehren recalls the moment he first laid… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Images of a Nordic Drama
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 28th to May 8th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The women-in-the-workplace comedy 9 to 5, which starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as three women dealing with office harassment… Read More #HotDocs22 Review: Still Working 9 to 5
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Polar Bear is the latest Earth Day release from Disneynature, this time following a polar bear family in the Arctic, with a strong focus on how climate change is impacting their environment. Narrated by Catherine Keener, the film takes on the perspective of a young female “ice bear”… Read More Disney+ Review: Polar Bear
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.” This is the mantra that Prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) repeats throughout the Viking epic The Northman, a muscular piece of filmmaking from director Robert Eggers that is both his biggest creative swing and… Read More Review: The Northman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) At the heart of All My Puny Sorrows, the latest emotional work from Canadian filmmaker Michael McGowan (Saint Ralph, One Week, Still Mine), is the push and pull between one person not wanting to live and another trying to show them that there is a reason to go… Read More Review: All My Puny Sorrows
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director Martin Edralin’s debut feature Islands is a simmering and powerful portrait of the loneliness epidemic as seen through the eyes of Joshua (Rogelio Balagtas), a very shy Filipino immigrant living in Toronto. Joshua is a middle-aged man who still lives with his elderly parents. He’s never had… Read More Review: Islands
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Minamata, the new film starring Johnny Depp, got a publicity boost recently when fans of the actor helped make it the third place winner in the ill-conceived Oscars Fan Favourite category presented during this year’s Academy Awards. That the actor’s supporters could essentially game the online voting system… Read More VOD Review: Minamata
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The second film from co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who are credited collectively as Daniels, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an audacious sophomore feature that puts a variety of genres, filmmaking styles and sci-fi ideas into a blender, and hits spin to create a singularly entertaining… Read More Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Nate Foster (Rueby Wood), the title character in Disney’s surprisingly charming Better Nate Than Ever, is an honest to goodness theatre kid. You know, the sort that sings into his hairbrush, memorizes Fiddler on the Roof, and fantasizes about winning a Tony. He has big Broadway dreams, if… Read More Disney+ Review: Better Nate Than Ever
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Did Richard Linklater really go to the moon as a kid? Not likely, but his latest film, the very charming and sweetly nostalgic Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, will make you believe he might have for a little over ninety minutes. Done in a similar rotoscoped animation… Read More Netflix Review: Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Director Justin Kurzel’s film Nitram follows in the footsteps of Paul Greengrass’s 22 July, Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique and Gus van Sant’s Elephant (a fictionalized take on Columbine), as a film that dramatizes a real life mass shooting. In the case of Kurzel’s film, it dramatizes the events surrounding… Read More Review: Nitram
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. Director Marie-Geneviève Chabot’s documentary Beneath the Surface follows three adult brothers who reunite with their father for a fishing trip in Quebec, in hopes… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Beneath the Surface
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Canadian Film Fest runs in two segments from March 22nd to 26th and March 29th to April 2nd, exclusively on Super Channel. In horseback riding terms, a “long rider” is someone who has done over a thousand miles in a single equestrian trip. Director Sean Cisterna’s… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: The Long Rider
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Lost Daughter is nominated for Best Actress (Olivia Colman), Best Supporting Actress (Jessie Buckley) and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards. What does it mean to be a bad mother? And is the feeling that you aren’t doing a good enough job something that all… Read More Review: The Lost Daughter
The Joy of Movies 