By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song – “Io Sì (Seen)” Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, The Life Ahead mainly serves as a late-career showcase for Italian actress Sophia Loren. Now in the twilight of her career, it’s easy to think of the film as a… Read More Netflix Review: The Life Ahead
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay An Indian entrepreneur’s rise from the bottom to the top of the class system is charted in filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s latest film The White Tiger, a dark and incredibly entertaining drama that kept me hooked from start to blistering finish.… Read More Netflix Review: The White Tiger
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Visual Effects One of the best things that has happened with advancements in visual effects is that real animals no longer need to be used on screen. From the tiger in Life of Pi, to the apes in the modern Planet of… Read More Disney+ Review: The One and Only Ivan
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Visual Effects As it turns out, the plainly descriptive title of Love and Monsters is a very fitting one. The film has monsters. Lots of ‘em, in fact, and very imaginative ones, too. Enough to get the film a surprise Oscar nomination… Read More Netflix Review: Love and Monsters
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Visual Effects Based on the book Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Midnight Sky is George Clooney’s latest effort as a director and his first in the science fiction genre. It’s a decent if somewhat uneven sci-fi thriller that is ambitious… Read More Netflix Review: The Midnight Sky
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Actress (Andra Day) Andra Day’s titular performance in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which already won her a Golden Globe and has gotten her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress as well, is a prime example of a fine performance that… Read More Review: The United States vs. Billie Holiday
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When we first meet Frankie (Alana Hawley Purvis) in the very good homegrown drama Range Roads, which is closing the virtual Canadian Film Fest tonight, her face is painted white and she is wearing a bright red wig, playing the over the top role of a queen on… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Range Roads
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Courier, a new spy thriller that delivers in terms of “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” entertainment, tells the true story of Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a mild-mannered English salesman who was hired to sneak documents out of the Soviet Union at the height of… Read More VOD Review: The Courier
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Danish filmmaker Christina Rosendahl’s period piece drama The Good Traitor joins the wide range of films that have been made about World War II from the American and British perspectives, and sets itself apart by exploring Denmark’s complicated role in the conflict with the Nazis. The film serves… Read More VOD Review: The Good Traitor
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Set in 1981 during South Africa’s apartheid rule, Moffie explores the effects of the country’s compulsory military service through the eyes of a young man discovering his sexuality. The main character is Nicholas van der Swart (Kai Luke Brümmer), a quiet young man who, at the start of… Read More VOD Review: Moffie
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Set in July of 1995 at the height of the conflict between Bosnia and Serbia, the Oscar-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida? is a gripping and startling film that takes these historical events from nearly three decades ago and puts them into sharp, chilling focus. This conflict is explored through… Read More VOD Review: Quo Vadis, Aida?
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dramatizing the life of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (Pål Sverre Hagen), who became the first man to reach the South Pole with his team of explorers on December 14th, 1911, Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition offers a mix of adventure movie and biographical drama that is mostly successful on… Read More VOD Review: Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Women make up less than three percent of all technical and production roles in the music industry, and in 2019, only five out of the top one hundred DJs were women. These are some of the surprising stats presented to us in director Stacey Lee’s documentary Underplayed, which… Read More VOD Review: Underplayed
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer), the main character in the new film French Exit, is a former New York socialite who doesn’t really know what to do with herself now that she has found she is still alive. You see, she always assumed that she would die before her… Read More Review: French Exit
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In terms of Liam Neeson action movies, which have basically become a genre unto themselves, The Marksman is a pretty good one. I didn’t really expect to be saying that given the tepid reviews this one has been getting, but I’m glad I gave it a chance, because… Read More Review: The Marksman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Sugar Daddy, which is premiering tonight as the opening film of the virtual Canadian Film Fest on Super Channel, serves as a compelling showcase for its star Kelly McCormack. McCormack, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, stars as Darren, a classic “starving artist” living in Toronto. She works… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Sugar Daddy
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a film that can be fully enjoyed on its own as a piece of rousing superhero entertainment, but the experience grows even richer when you take into account the full history behind how it came to be released. To briefly recap this history,… Read More Review: Zack Snyder’s Justice League
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The feature debut of Canadian co-directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, who’ve made several short films together over the past few years, Violation is a confidently made first feature that serves as an incredibly dark entry into the revenge thriller genre. Sims-Fewer stars in the film as Miriam,… Read More VOD Review: Violation
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Five students from different parts of the world who all share a similar entrepreneurial spirit come together to compete at the 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards in the new National Geographic documentary Own the Room, which is premiering on Disney Plus this weekend. The five students that the… Read More Disney+ Review: Own the Room
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Alfred “Boogie” Chin (Taylor Takahashi), the main character in Fresh Off the Boat producer Eddie Huang’s feature directorial debut Boogie, is a Taiwanese-American teenager in Queens, New York who dreams of playing professional basketball. Working from his own screenplay, Huang has crafted a film that does a pretty… Read More Review: Boogie
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