By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) As we enter Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the studio is branching out to bring some of their lesser known comic book characters to the screen, and with it comes the chance to further diversify their slate of cinematic superheroes. Such is the case with Shang-Chi… Read More Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Sean Penn’s latest film as a director, and the first that he stars in as well, Flag Day is based on journalist Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life. The book, which has been adapted for the screen with mixed results… Read More Review: Flag Day
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) What’s the difference between “real” friends and “vacation” friends? The former stick by you through thick and thin, where as the latter you befriend for a limited amount of time, fully expecting the interactions to be transitory. But what happens if vacation friends come back into your life… Read More Review: Vacation Friends
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) “So may we start?” These are the words that the film’s cast, flanked by a chorus of backup singers, sings during the rapturous, single-take opening sequence of Annette, asking for the audience’s attention as they request to start the show. Taking us from inside a studio and out… Read More Review: Annette
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) An assassin sets out to avenge the death of her mentor and father figure in The Protégé, a passable but somewhat disappointing new action thriller from Casino Royale director Martin Campbell that is elevated by the casting of Maggie Q and Michael Keaton, but bogged down by a… Read More Review: The Protégé
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When I say that PAW Patrol: The Movie, a feature length spinoff of the popular Canadian children’s television show, is surprisingly pretty good, I feel like I should clarify that statement by adding “for a PAW Patrol movie.” I do not say this to throw any shade on… Read More Review: PAW Patrol: The Movie
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) I missed the feeling of sitting in a theatre and being pleasantly surprised by how good something was. That’s the experience I had last week at the morning press screening of Free Guy, director Shawn Levy’s new high concept comedy that is set within the confines of a… Read More Review: Free Guy
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) David Lowery’s The Green Knight, the always interesting filmmaker’s bold reimagining of an Arthurian legend, is a film for audiences to luxuriate in. It’s a fantasy epic, sure, but unlike any other film bearing that description. This is not a swords-and-sorcery movie in the classic sense. There is… Read More Review: The Green Knight
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Tom McCarthy has had a very interesting career as a filmmaker, starting out with small indie films like The Station Agent and The Visitor, before moving on to receive a story credit on Pixar’s Up, and to direct the Oscar-winning Spotlight. McCarthy followed that movie up with the… Read More Review: Stillwater
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Disney’s Jungle Cruise isn’t the first movie to be based on one of their theme park attractions, with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise being the most famous example, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, either. What it is, though, is a pleasingly diverting film that… Read More Review: Jungle Cruise
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Del Close himself may have never achieved household name status, but odds are you’ve heard of Bill Murray, John Candy, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and any number of the other Saturday Night Live and SCTV stars who were trained in his school of long-form improvisational comedy. Close… Read More Review: For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) An 18-year-old kid named Michael (Ryder McLaughlin) has ambitions of becoming a pro skateboarder in skater and filmmaker Mikey Alfred’s feature directorial debut North Hollywood, which shares some common DNA with Jonah Hill’s 2018 gem Mid90s. Alfred served as a producer on that film, which also featured McLaughlin,… Read More VOD Review: North Hollywood
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Morgan Neville’s new documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is as much about the life of the celebrity chef and TV personality as it is about his death. But the question of why Bourdain ended up killing himself in a hotel room in France in 2018… Read More Review: Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) When you hear the basic outline for the plot of Pig, and that it stars Nicholas Cage as a lonesome truffle hunter living in the woods who has his beloved pig stolen, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was another one of Cage’s gonzo action roles,… Read More Review: Pig
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Joshua Zemen sets out in search of the “52 Hertz Whale” in his documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, which follows Zemen and a team of marine biologists as they try to track the elusive whale’s signal across the Pacific Ocean. Because this specific creature… Read More VOD Review: The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Shot in black-and-white and entirely free of dialogue, Russian filmmaker Viktor Kosakovskiy’s documentary Gunda is an often hypnotic piece of experiential cinema that captures the day to day lives of a group of farm animals. The film, which boasts actor and noted animal rights activist Joaquin Phoenix as an… Read More VOD Review: Gunda
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Captain Ramadan is training the next generation of female weightlifters in Egypt, with his outdoor facility surrounded by chain link fencing on a street corner in the port city of Alexandria providing both a training ground and safe haven for girls who want to get into the sport.… Read More Review: Lift Like a Girl
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Over a decade after her big screen debut in Iron Man 2, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) has finally gotten her own long-awaited solo film in Black Widow, the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And the film is indeed long-awaited by fans, especially after having its initial… Read More Disney+ Review: Black Widow
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) “Y’all wanna year a story about how me and this bitch fell out? It’s kind of long, but full of suspense.” This was the first post from Twitter user A’Ziah “Zola” King in a 148-tweet thread posted in 2015, detailing a wild weekend road trip that she took… Read More Review: Zola
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Liam Neeson has made such a career out of playing grizzled older men who are forced to become action heroes in extreme situations that you can practically copy and paste his name into any high stakes premise and have yourself a pretty bankable thriller. Earlier this year, we… Read More VOD Review: The Ice Road
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