By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan come together in Come Away, a live action fairy tale mashup that features some appealing ideas and elements, but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The main characters are Alice (Keira Chansa) and her brother Peter (Jordan A. Nash), two kids… Read More VOD Review: Come Away
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) David Fincher’s Mank, which is adapted from a screenplay that the director’s father Jack wrote back in the 1990s before he passed away, is an ambitious black and white drama about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and the writing of Citizen Kane. But despite how it might sound on… Read More Netflix Review: Mank
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) If you want to feel old, just think about the fact that Enchanted, Disney’s glorious live action musical about an animated princess who comes to life in our world, came out over a decade ago. It’s kind of hard to believe. The 2007 film served as both a… Read More Disney+ Review: Godmothered
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Anna Sewell’s 1877 novel Black Beauty, which was written from the perspective of a horse and had an animal rights message that was revelatory for its time, is one of the biggest selling books of all time and has been adapted for the screen a number of times… Read More Disney+ Review: Black Beauty
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Do you want to watch a David Bowie biopic where “Space Oddity” is talked about but never actually heard? That’s the question I kept asking myself while watching Stardust, a movie that is ostensibly about the legendary rock star but doesn’t actually feature any of his music. Considering… Read More Review: Stardust
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by filmmaking brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms, the offbeat Christmas movie Fatman is one of those films that many will watch based on the absurdity of its premise alone, which was revealed in a pretty wild trailer. What is the premise, you might ask? Well,… Read More VOD Review: Fatman
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A grandfather and grandson bond over bocce in Team Marco, a simple but charming family movie that is being released digitally this week and serves as a fine viewing option for families looking for something made outside the studio system. The lead character is Marco (Owen Vaccaro), an… Read More VOD Review: Team Marco
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The greatest challenge facing writer/director Francis Lee’s Ammonite, which serves as a companion piece of sorts to his acclaimed romantic drama God’s Own Country, has nothing to do with the film itself, but rather has to do with unfair comparisons to the recent Portrait of a Lady on… Read More Review: Ammonite
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In 2003, co-directors Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar released The Corporation, a documentary based upon a book by Canadian professor Joel Bakan that sought to psychoanalyze corporations as if they were people, and came to the conclusion that they would be diagnosed as psychopaths. Now, seventeen years later,… Read More Review: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney’s Mulan, the studio’s big budget live action remake of their 1998 animated classic, has had a pretty rough time getting in front of audiences. The film became one of the first major cinematic casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic when its theatrical release got cancelled back in March,… Read More Review: Mulan (Digital Release)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) What if Encyclopedia Brown, the lead character from Donald J. Sobol’s book series about a young private eye, grew up? That’s the main question posed by The Kid Detective, a very good Canadian indie film from writer/director Evan Morgan that explores what happens when a former high school… Read More Review: The Kid Detective
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) An older couple fight to save their grandson and daughter-in-law from a violent family of hillbillies in Let Him Go. If that sounds like an overly simplistic description of writer/director Thomas Bezucha’s film, which was adapted from a novel by Larry Watson, it’s also the easiest way to… Read More Review: Let Him Go
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) While Steven Spielberg’s name doesn’t actually appear on Come Play, the new thriller about a monster who connects to our world through electronic devices, the film is produced by his company Amblin Partners, and the filmmaker’s influence is felt all over it. It’s the way that Come Play… Read More Review: Come Play
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Bong Joon-ho made history earlier this year when his movie Parasite became the first ever international film to take home the Oscar for Best Picture, a stunning win that was complimented by the South Korean filmmaker also winning the award for Best Director. It was a deserved victory… Read More Review: Memories of Murder (Theatrical Re-Release)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Did you ever wonder what that loveable snowman sidekick Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad) was doing in the movie Frozen between the time when Elsa (Idina Menzel) brought him to life while belting out “Let It Go” on the side of a snowy mountain, but before he met… Read More Disney+ Review: Once Upon a Snowman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Growing up, writer/director Trevor Cameron was always fascinated by stories of his great-great-great-uncle, Gabriel Dumont. A Métis leader and lieutenant to Louis Riel, Dumont is a legendary figure for his involvement in the North-West Rebellions of 1885, gaining him the nickname the “Métis Braveheart.” Wanting to learn more… Read More imagineNATIVE 2020 Review: Shadow of Dumont
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Aaron Sorkin has a way with words and a real knack for writing film dialogue, as we already saw, or rather heard, in his scripts for David Fincher’s brilliant Facebook drama The Social Network and Danny Boyle’s structurally inventive biopic Steve Jobs. Sorkin’s gift for writing memorable, rapid… Read More Netflix Review: The Trial of the Chicago 7
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Clouds, a new teen drama that was recently acquired by Disney Plus and is dropping on the streaming service today, is a biopic of Zach Sobiech, the young singer-songwriter with terminal cancer whose bittersweet folk-pop song “Clouds” became a viral hit in 2012 when he was seventeen years… Read More Disney+ Review: Clouds
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A dramatic revenge thriller set in the American suburbia of the 1950s, The Secrets We Keep follows Maja (Noomi Rapace), a Romanian woman who fled her home country following World War II, and has tried her best to forget the past. Maja has established a quiet life in… Read More VOD Review: The Secrets We Keep
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The most obvious comparison to The Curse of Audrey Earnsahw, Canadian filmmaker Robert Thomas Lee’s new period horror film which was produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada, would be The Witch. Like that 2015 film directed by Robert Eggers, Lee’s film is another work of folk horror… Read More Review: The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw
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