By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Rudy Ray Moore was a self-described entrepreneur and fledgling musician who worked in a record shop in the 1970s, when he decided to branch out into doing comedy records. Creating a flamboyant alter-ego named Dolemite, a foul-mouthed pimp who speaks in verse, Moore ended up becoming a massively… Read More Review: Dolemite Is My Name
By John Corrado ★ (out of 4) There are some movies that simply don’t work, and others that are such creative misfires that they almost become fascinating case studies in what not to do. The keyword is “almost.” The bafflingly bad space drama Lucy in the Sky is one such example, a film that swings… Read More Review: Lucy in the Sky
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The possibilities of human genome editing through the discovery of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a specific family of DNA sequences, are explored in director Adam Bolt’s documentary Human Nature, which looks at the possibilities of a future where diseases or even certain traits could be cut… Read More Review: Human Nature
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Deep in South America, amidst the mountaintops and rainforests of Colombia, a ruthless band of teen soldiers hold an American woman (Julianne Nicholson) captive. They are known simply as the Organization, and when we first meet these rebels in the film Monos, their leader (Wilson Salazar), a short-statured… Read More Review: Monos
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Following the outbreak of a mysterious illness that wiped out all of the grown ups, leaving just the teenagers behind, the town of Potter’s Bluff has divided into two halves. The East Siders are scrappy survivalist punks who get by on their own, and the West Siders have… Read More Review: Riot Girls
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Phyllis Ellis, who takes an investigative approach to the material, the documentary Toxic Beauty explores how harmful ingredients like phthalates, parabens and even formaldihyde are lurking in a lot of the soaps, deodorants, creams and shampoos that many women use on their bodies every single day.… Read More Review: Toxic Beauty
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Toronto’s own Daniel Roher, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band is an engaging and emotional look at Robertson’s own life and career as lead guitarist and main songwriter for The Band, as well as the rise and fall of the group itself. The film… Read More Review: Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Charlie (Adam Driver) is a theatre director who lives with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), an actress who performs in his plays, and their young son Henry (Azhy Robertson) in New York. When they start to drift apart, Charlie and Nicole decide to split up their marriage, with… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Marriage Story (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by James Mangold, following up his dark and brilliant X-Men spinoff Logan, Ford v Ferrari is a solid piece of entertainment that feels muscular in its construction. The film is based on the true story of Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), a race car driver whose career got cut… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Ford v Ferrari (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The third feature from Toronto filmmaker Kazik Radwanski, Anne at 13,000 ft is shot in his usual minimalistic style, offering a gritty and stripped down portrait of its title character, who is in the throes of a mental breakdown. Anne (Deragh Campbell) is in her late twenties and… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Anne at 13,000 ft (Platform)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A bloody, gory and socially conscious Indigenous zombie movie, Blood Quantum explores what happens when a plague that turns people into flesh-eating zombies ravages the outside world, and everyone on a First Nations reserve somehow has immunity to the virus. The film takes place on the Red Crow… Read More #TIFF19 Review: Blood Quantum (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Brittany (Jillian Bell) is a pretty typical millennial in her late-twenties. She drinks too much and doesn’t follow the best diet, decisions that are partially fuelled by deep insecurity, feeling like everyone around her is moving forward in terms of relationships and having kids as she remains stuck… Read More Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, and his first one in English, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan is in some ways a departure for the young filmmaker, but it still feels like a work that is distinctly his. This is his attempt at making something… Read More Review: The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There has been a lot of talk in the movie industry lately about increased representation for minority groups, and that’s a good thing. It’s long overdue. But the one group that all too often gets left out of this conversation is people with disabilities. The problem isn’t really… Read More Review: The Peanut Butter Falcon
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) After closing their doors during the recession and leaving thousands of workers without a job, a former General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio got taken over by a Chinese company and was able to reopen in 2014 as Fuyao Glass America. What happened next is documented in American… Read More Review: American Factory
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Named for the first single off of Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 debut album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Blinded by the Light tells the story of an unlikely Springsteen fan who uses the music of The Boss to help him find his own place in the world. Based on… Read More Review: Blinded by the Light
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Back in 1961, the United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was openly fighting for the decolonization of Africa at the time, was killed in a plane crash in Northern Rhodsia, and the common belief was that it was a simple engine failure. But for years an alternate… Read More Review: Cold Case Hammarskjöld
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz is frequently included on lists of the most banned and challenged books due to its disturbing subject matter and creepy black and white illustrations by Stephen Gammell. The three books, which were originally published between 1981 and 1991… Read More Review: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) After a mysterious illness wiped out the female half of the human population a decade ago, a father (Casey Affleck) must keep his 11-year-old daughter Rag (Anna Pniowsky) hidden in the woods from the remnants of society and disguised as a boy, with other men threatening to do her… Read More Review: Light of My Life
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) There are movies of the moment, and then there is Luce, a race-based dramatic thriller that ignited plenty of conversations at Sundance and weaves so many hot button issues into its narrative that it can’t help but feel heavy-handed. The film centres around Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a… Read More Review: Luce
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