By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest from veteran Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald, Weirdos is an endlessly charming and surprisingly touching coming of age story, that finds the director in top form delivering one of his best and most heartfelt films. The year is 1976, and Kit (Dylan Authors) and his best friend Alice… Read More Review: Weirdos
Beauty and the Beast Review By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) There is perhaps no bigger test as to the resilience of Disney’s current trend of doing live action remakes of their animated classics than Beauty and the Beast. This is a pretty much beat for beat recreation of their iconic 1991 release, a film so beloved… Read More Three Views: Beauty and the Beast
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Some films really feel like they are trying too hard to please, and The Last Word is guilty of this. This is the sort of cliche-riddled Sundance dramedy that follows its formula to a tee, trying to tackle potentially poignant subject matter through a sunny disposition. The film feels… Read More Review: The Last Word
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The most revealing character moment in Hello Destroyer comes when star hockey player Tyson Burr (Jared Abrahmson) lies in a dimly lit hotel room, icing his knuckles after a fight during the game, and tells one of his teammates about how he could never stand silence as a child.… Read More Review: Hello Destroyer
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The easiest way to describe Before I Fall would be as a sort of YA Groundhog Day, but this richly textured and wholly engaging high school time loop drama still has enough originality and smarts to become something really good on its own terms. It’s “Cupid’s Day,” and Samantha… Read More Review: Before I Fall
Get Out Review By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) have been dating for several months, and the time has finally come for him to meet her parents. But he is black and she is white, and Chris is worried about how her rich and very… Read More Three Views: Get Out
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is a young girl who is kept locked up in a cell, being fed worms and strapped to a wheelchair so she can attend classes with her sympathetic teacher, Ms. Justineau (Gemma Arterton). You see, human civilization has been all but destroyed by a zombie… Read More Review: The Girl With All The Gifts
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Taking a very meta approach to exploring its material, My Scientology Movie becomes just as much about the intense blowbacks that come with trying to make a documentary about Scientology, as it is about the infamous organization and its cultish ideology. The film follows the BBC’s Louis Theroux as he tries to investigate… Read More Review: My Scientology Movie
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) After being forced to flee their Tehran apartment due to sudden construction that threatens to topple the building, Emad (Shabab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) take out a lease on a shabby new room. But the old tenant refuses to remove her stuff, and when an incident… Read More Review: The Salesman
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) is a prospector in Texas who is desperate for a big break and becomes convinced that he can strike gold in the jungles of Indonesia. So in 1988 he teams up with geologist Michael Acosta (Edgar Remírez) to help him excavate and get their commodity on the stock… Read More Review: Gold
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Chad Cutler (Michael Fassbender) lives with his wife (Lyndsey Marshal) and their two young kids in the same trailer park as his father Cal (Brendan Gleeson), a notorious crime boss who doesn’t want his son to stray from the family business. Chad is desperate to break away from… Read More Review: Trespass Against Us
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster), the former a divorced father and the latter an ex-convict, are brothers who are violently robbing a series of banks around West Texas, trying to make back enough money to pay a debt. Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil… Read More Review: Hell or High Water
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Directed by Tom Ford, following up his masterful directorial debut A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals is a story within a story where the story within the story is infinitely more compelling than the actual plot. This means it’s only really half worth seeing. The film follows Susan Morrow… Read More Review: Nocturnal Animals
Split Review By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) M. Night Shyamalan has had a rocky career following his early successes like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, slowly segueing into self-parody in the years that followed. But now the director has returned with Split, a ludicrous and often entertaining thriller that continues his recent resurgence of… Read More Three Views: Split
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Although The Founder is sometimes staged under the guise of being a feel good story, it’s the bitterness lurking underneath the surface that makes this biopic interesting. The film recounts the true story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), an “over the hill milkshake machine salesman” from Illinois, who discovered a family burger joint in… Read More Review: The Founder
Hidden Figures Review By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) A crowbar smashes into the sign for a “colored” washroom, tearing it from the wall. A piece of chalk passes from a white man’s hand to a black woman at a classified NASA briefing, where there was previously no protocol for women attending, let alone people… Read More Three Views: Hidden Figures
Fences Review By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) is a man who is almost always talking, filled with stories and sharing his opinions on just about everything. When Fences opens, we find him already in the middle of a conversation with his coworker Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), as they both cling to… Read More Three Views: Fences
By Erin Corrado As part of Canada’s Top 10, the Student Shorts Programme plays today at 1pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Filmmakers will be in attendance, and the Student Short Film Prizes will be announced following the screening. Each film was made as part of a university program by students, and while there… Read More Review: Canada’s Top Ten Student Shorts Programme
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first thing we see gracing the screen in La La Land, the new throwback to old musicals that is good but not quite as good as you’ve heard, is a nicely retro logo for Summit Entertainment, presented on a black and white screen in Academy aspect ratio. The screen pulls out to announce… Read More Review: La La Land
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) “Maybe I’m a feminist,” teenage protagonist Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) tells his mother Dorothea (Annette Bening) partway through 20th Century Women, and there is perhaps no better statement to sum up what makes this film so special. This is the story of a boy essentially being raised by the woman… Read More Review: 20th Century Women
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