By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest from Canadian filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee, and her second feature following Year of the Carnivore in 2009, Octavio is Dead! is a unique character drama that provides an interesting exploration of gender identity, repressed sexuality, and getting to know the ghosts of those who have died. The film… Read More Review: Octavio is Dead!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) While social media sites like Facebook and Twitter sell themselves as being open for anyone to post anything, they in reality all have strict guidelines that are heavily enforced by anonymous content moderators. The majority of the work these “cleaners” do is outsourced to other countries like the… Read More Review: The Cleaners
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) It’s been fourteen years since The Incredibles came out in 2004, and now writer-director Brad Bird has finally given us the sequel that fans have been eagerly anticipating for ages. So was the long wait worth it for Incredibles 2? The answer to that would have to be… Read More Review: Incredibles 2
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Morgan Neville, following his Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom and the excellent Best of Enemies, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? looks at the life and career of Fred Rogers, the unlikely star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. With his soft voice and gentle way of speaking, Fred Rogers had a true knack for… Read More Review: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Focusing on the 2015 trial of Oskar Gröning, a former SS guard who served as a bookkeeper at Auschwitz and was put on trial in Germany at 94 years old for his involvement in the Holocaust, The Accountant of Auschwitz is a fascinating and multilayered documentary. Facing charges for the murder of… Read More Review: The Accountant of Auschwitz
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The first thing we see onscreen in Hereditary is a newspaper obituary for the elderly matriarch of the Graham family, telling us she is survived by her daughter Annie (Toni Collete), son-in-law Steve (Gabriel Byrne), and grandchildren Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). This nicely sets the tone for… Read More Review: Hereditary
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) To watch First Reformed is to wrestle with the same questions that are plaguing the main character Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke), a tormented priest who is going through a profound crisis of faith, as he struggles to reconcile himself to the fact that human beings are desecrating the… Read More Review: First Reformed
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Based on Ian McEwan’s bestselling novella, which the author himself adapted into a screenplay, and beautifully brought to the screen by first time director Dominic Cooke, On Chesil Beach is a classic romantic drama that engages simply because of the strength of its characters and storytelling. The year is 1962,… Read More Review: On Chesil Beach
Solo: A Star Wars Story Review By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest entry into Disney’s rapidly expanding Star Wars universe, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a prequel to the original film that seeks to explore the origins of everyone’s favourite scoundrel and rogue pilot Han Solo, and does so with fairly… Read More Three Views: Solo: A Star Wars Story
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest from Toronto filmmaker Maya Gallus, The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution focuses on a selection of female chefs in Toronto, New York, London and France who are fighting for equal representation in the restaurant business. The chefs talk about their experiences as women in what is still largely seen as a… Read More Review: The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution
Avengers: Infinity War Review By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Back in 2008, the first Iron Man was released, forever changing the game in terms of both summer blockbusters and comic book movies, and setting the stage for the expansive and carefully orchestrated Marvel Cinematic Universe in the years to come. Ten years and… Read More Three Views: Avengers: Infinity War
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Adapted from crime novelist Nancy Pickard’s novel of the same name, The Scent of Rain & Lightning follows Jody Linder (Maika Monroe), a young women who finds out that Billy Croyle (Brad Carter), the man who was convicted of killing her parents (Maggie Grace and Justin Chatwin), had his sentence… Read More Review: The Scent of Rain & Lightning
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Winning awards for Best Actor and Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, You Were Never Really Here follows Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a shell-shocked war veteran who works as a hired gun, tracking down and rescuing underage girls who have been taken for sex trafficking, and killing the… Read More Review: You Were Never Really Here
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Based on the novel by the late author Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse tells the story of Saul Indian Horse, an Ojibwe boy who is taken from his family in Northwestern Ontario in the 1960s, and brought to a Catholic Residential School. At the school, Saul is faced with abuse and is… Read More Review: Indian Horse
Ready Player One Review By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There is a serendipitous quality to the fact that Steven Spielberg wound up directing an adaptation of Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One. The book is such a geeky love letter to the pop cultural mecca that was the 1980s, a decade that… Read More Three Views: Ready Player One
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A musical biopic of circus founder P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), The Greatest Showman is a splashy and wildly entertaining film that works as pure spectacle. It’s tightly edited, the songs are catchy, and the musical numbers are dazzling, all adding up to a complete package that is actually one… Read More Review: The Greatest Showman
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 stage play, which was adapted for the screen four times between 1930 and 1988, Journey’s End takes place towards the end of World War I in 1918, and follows a group of British soldiers who are holed up in the trenches in northern… Read More Review: Journey’s End
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) At the beginning of Flower, the 17-year-old Erica (Zoey Deutch) is in a cop car, giving a blow job to a local cop (Eric Edelstein). This is all part of a money-making scheme, where she pursues sexual encounters with middle aged men, and has her two friends Kala… Read More Review: Flower
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) is a pretty typical high schooler. He gets solid grades and has a good home life with his parents Emily (Jennifer Garner) and Jack (Josh Duhamel), who were high school sweethearts, and his little sister Nora (Talitha Bateman) is a budding chef who does… Read More Review: Love, Simon
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from writer-director Armando Iannucci, The Death of Stalin is a political satire that takes place in Moscow in 1953, and mostly unfolds following the death of dictator Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin), leaving Party Head Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) trying to plan a funeral as Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor)… Read More Review: The Death of Stalin
