By John Corrado Good Boy, director Ben Leonberg’s new supernatural horror movie, has been gaining buzz for the uniqueness of its premise; it’s a haunted house movie shown from the perspective of a pet dog. The canine in question is Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. Indy’s loyal owner is Todd (Shane Jensen), who… Read More Movie Review: Good Boy
By John Corrado Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars in The Smashing Machine, a very good biopic of early UFC fighter Mark Kerr, that finds the wrestler-turned-actor giving it his all in his first big, meaty dramatic role. The film, which also serves as the first solo outing of director Benny Safdie, after splitting from his… Read More Movie Review: The Smashing Machine
By John Corrado Anemone, the feature directorial debut of Ronan Day-Lewis, is notable for bringing the filmmaker’s father, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, out of retirement. This is his first acting role since starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, a film that has only grown in stature in the near-decade since it was released. This already… Read More Movie Review: Anemone
By John Corrado The runtime for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is 162 minutes. The length of the movie is surely one of the least pertinent things about it, but it’s worth mentioning because of how kinetic the film feels. Nearly two hours in, I was surprised there was less than an hour… Read More Movie Review: One Battle After Another
By John Corrado In the Finland-shot survival thriller Dead of Winter, which takes place during a Minnesota snowstorm, Emma Thompson is doing her best impression of Frances McDormand in Fargo, and her out-of-character performance is what makes the film worth seeing. Thompson stars as Barb Sorenson, an older lady who is going ice fishing alone… Read More Movie Review: Dead of Winter
By John Corrado A struggling improv comic in Baltimore needs an emergency dentist appointment on Christmas Eve. It sounds like the setup for a joke (and maybe it is), but it’s also the inciting incident of The Baltimorons, a tender and funny chance encounter romance from director Jay Duplass. Duplass crafts the film as a… Read More Movie Review: The Baltimorons
By John Corrado James Gunn’s Superman is the former Marvel filmmaker’s attempt to reboot the DC Cinematic Universe. In doing so, Gunn is going back to the beginning by introducing a new Superman, with David Corenswet taking over the iconic role from Henry Cavill. Gunn and Corenswet’s new version (and vision) of the character couldn’t… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Superman
By John Corrado The first M3GAN was a campy killer robot movie that mainly became known for the memes generated by the dancing robot girl, which helped turn the Blumhouse film into a box office hit in 2023. This sequel, M3GAN 2.0, somewhat fittingly takes the Terminator 2 approach; the creative team of original director… Read More Blu-ray Review: M3GAN 2.0
By John Corrado Swiped is director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s glossy biopic of Whitney Wolfe (played by Lily James), a co-founder of ubiquitous dating app Tinder and the creator of Bumble. We first meet Wolfe at a Los Angeles meet-up for tech investors, trying to get financial backers for an app that connects orphanages in other… Read More Movie Review: Swiped (Disney+)
By John Corrado The seventh film in the franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth was one of the biggest box office hits of the summer, and is now available on physical media. You can read my full review of the film right here. This one is directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story),… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Jurassic World Rebirth (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado In his coming-of-age film Olmo, Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke finds the right balance between enjoyable portrait of bratty adolescence, and heavier, more dramatic scenes, telling a small but nuanced father-son story. There’s also some star power behind the film, having been produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. The titular Olmo (Aivan… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Olmo (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In their latest film collaboration Dead Lover, real life couple Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie craft a German Expressionist parody with a real handmade quality to it. Glowicki, who directs the film from a screenplay that she co-wrote with Petrie, stars as a lonely gravedigger. We are told that she smells really,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Dead Lover (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The entire setup for director Nick Corirossi’s The Napa Boys is itself an elaborate joke; it’s fashioned as the fourth film in a franchise, that has already received a series of spinoffs. Only none of these other entries exist, and the film that is supposed to have spawned this franchise is Alexander… Read More #TIFF50 Review: The Napa Boys (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado A prequel to his 2017 stop-motion film Junk Head, which was in turn based on a 2014 short, Junk World finds Japanese filmmaker Takahide Hori playing around on an even larger canvass. Hori’s film is set in a world of people and clones (called “Mulligans”), who rise up against the humans, leading… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Junk World (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The latest film from director Gus Van Sant, Dead Man’s Wire dramatizes a 1977 kidnapping that saw a disgruntled Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) take mortgage banker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage in his apartment. Hall is the son of the man (played by Al Pacino) who owns the mortgage firm that Kiritsis… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Dead Man’s Wire (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Director Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 is less biography of George Orwell, and more heavily slanted video essay that struggles to thread the needle between the British author’s work and selected modern events. It’s a major disappointment. The film’s title, of course, is a reference to Orwell’s most famous book 1984,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Orwell: 2+2=5 (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado The latest film from Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines, Blue Valentine), Roofman is based on the true story of Jeffrey Manchester, a convicted criminal who became known in the media as “Roofman” for robbing a series of McDonalds by cutting a hole through the roof. Manchester was doing this to… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Roofman (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado Poetic License is the delightful directorial debut of Maude Apatow, best known as an actress on Euphoria and in her father Judd Apatow’s films. Working from a perceptive screenplay by Raffi Donatich, the younger Apatow’s behind-the-camera debut is confident and funny, while also exploring the complexities of friendship. The film feels like… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Poetic License (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the director’s long-awaited adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel, begins in the icy Arctic. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is being hunted by the monster of his own creation (played by Jacob Elordi), taking refuge on a Viking ship. In telling the combined stories of the mad scientist, and… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Frankenstein (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Despite being the latest case for Daniel Craig’s Southern detective Benoit Blanc, director Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out whodunnit Wake Up Dead Man actually shifts the focus to a young priest played by Josh O’Connor. It’s a bit of a reset that works for the Netflix franchise. In fact, Blanc is mostly… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Special Presentations)
The Joy of Movies 