By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) We are currently in uncharted territory. With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world, the economy has been brought to its knees, and one of the big casualties of this are movie theatres. Due to medical recommendations to practise social distancing and stay at home, all theatres have been… Read More Review: Sonic the Hedgehog (Early Digital Release)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Irish ghost comedy Extra Ordinary, which was the opening night film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival last year where it played extremely well with the packed audience of horror fans, offers a fun and surprisingly charming twist on the supernatural genre. Laced with a quirky… Read More Review: Extra Ordinary
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by British screenwriter William Nicholson, who based the story on his own parents, Hope Gap is the sort of quiet drama that gets by almost entirely on its performances. The main characters are Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy), an old married couple who… Read More Review: Hope Gap
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Dave Bautista tries to pull a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in My Spy, seemingly copying the career choices of his fellow wrestler turned actor to star in this kids action comedy as a CIA agent who becomes the unlikely father figure to a precocious child. And if Bautista… Read More Review: My Spy
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In Run This Town, a Canadian political satire that serves as the feature debut of writer-director Ricky Tollman, a young upstart journalist named Bram (Ben Platt) tries to track down a video of the Mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine, as the mayor’s handlers led by “special assistant”… Read More Review: Run This Town
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest social realist drama from veteran English filmmaker Ken Loach, Sorry We Missed You explores many of the same themes of systemic poverty and the struggles faced by those who aren’t at the top of the economic ladder as his Palme d’Or-winning previous film I, Daniel Blake.… Read More Review: Sorry We Missed You
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 22nd feature from Disney and Pixar, Onward is an entertaining and emotionally resonant animated adventure that imagines a “suburban fantasy world” that has lost its sense of wonder and magic. You see, in days of yore real magic used to exist in this world, but it has… Read More Review: Onward
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Set in Clifton Hill, the tacky, tourist trap area of Niagara Falls that the film is named after, Disappearance at Clifton Hill follows a woman named Abby (Tuppence Middleton), who returns to her hometown of Niagara Falls after her mother dies to help facilitate the sale of their… Read More Review: Disappearance at Clifton Hill
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Tom (Liam Neeson) and Joan (Lesley Manville) are an older married couple who share a quiet life together in Ireland, and how they both react in the wake of receiving devastating news is documented in the quietly moving drama Ordinary Love. They go for walks together and watch TV… Read More Review: Ordinary Love
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Jack London’s classic 1903 novel The Call of the Wild has already been adapted for the screen multiple times over the past century, starting with a silent film version in 1923. This was followed by a 1935 adaptation starring Clark Gable and Loretta Young, which deviated greatly from… Read More Review: The Call of the Wild
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is an 18th century French artist who is brought by boat to an island where she has been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), ahead of her arranged marriage to a Milanese businessman. But Héloïse is resisting the marriage and doesn’t… Read More Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Judy Garland gets the biopic treatment in director Rupert Goold’s Judy, a good movie built around a great performance from Renée Zellweger. The film received a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Makeup and Hairstyling, with Zellweger being the frontrunner to win in the former… Read More Review: Judy
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A timely film about sexual harassment at Fox News, Bombshell had so much potential but, aside from some solid performances, it’s just not very good. The film has some good scenes, but overall it’s an awkward, choppy mix of fact and fiction that ends up feeling like a… Read More Review: Bombshell
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) – the delightfully deranged alter ego of psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel who turned to crime after falling in love with her patient, the Joker – was undoubtedly the breakout star of Suicide Squad, and the best part of that otherwise disappointing movie. Now the comic… Read More Review: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) “We’re not homeless,” Rosie Davis (Sarah Greene) insists to a family member partway through the Irish drama Rosie, taking issue with their use of the word. “We’re just lost,” she adds, as if trying to convince herself so she doesn’t have to face the truth. When we first… Read More Review: Rosie
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Whether you agreed with her or not, there’s simply no denying that Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century, a writer whose often controversial opinions were sometimes hurtful and sometimes helpful, but always uniquely hers. Even when her contrarian views put… Read More Review: What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Symbolically named after Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 novel about poverty and injustice, and the beloved musical that it subsequently inspired, director Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a modern day fable about racial tensions and police brutality in contemporary France that explores how a series of events can bubble… Read More Review: Les Misérables
By John Corrado With 2019 officially in the rearview mirror, and 2020 already a few days in, it’s time for my countdown of the best movies of last year. It was a year that saw the release of some great movies, and also closed out a decade of moviegoing that saw the release of some… Read More The Best Movies of 2019
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Some movies get better the second time you watch them and, for me at least, Uncut Gems, the latest film from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie following up their brilliant, live-wire 2017 thriller Good Time, is absolutely one of them. In fact, my rating jumped up by a… Read More Review: Uncut Gems
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Despite the fact that it takes place over a hundred years ago, 1917 is a World War I drama that has an immediacy to it, heightened by the fact that the film is presented entirely in the form of one single take, shot with stunning dynamism by the… Read More Review: 1917
The Joy of Movies 