By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (official title) is a passion project for the Mexican filmmaker, who crafts an emotional stop-motion retelling of author Carlo Collodi’s classic book. The story of the wooden boy brought to life has been adapted for the screen countless times, perhaps most famously in Disney’s… Read More Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Leave it to Noah Baumbach to follow up his stunning 2019 drama Marriage Story with White Noise, an apocalyptic dark comedy about the existential fear of dying that still feels distinctly like a part of his filmography. Baumbach’s latest finds the writer-director tackling Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” 1985 post-modernist… Read More Review: White Noise
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bardo (full title Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) finds the Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker in introspective mode and working in the Spanish language for the first time since Biutiful in 2010, to craft a semi-autobiographical tale of identity and belonging,… Read More Review: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Wendell & Wild, which is being released directly to Netflix for Halloween following its premiere at TIFF, is the latest stop motion film from director Henry Selick, the creative mastermind behind classics like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. This is Selick’s first film since the Neil Gaiman… Read More Review: Wendell & Wild (Netflix)
By John Corrado Blonde is director Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which presented a somewhat fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe’s life, and it’s a film that has invoked strong reactions in viewers (and that’s putting it mildly). I watched Blonde a week ago on Netflix… Read More Some Thoughts on Andrew Dominik’s Blonde…
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) How does Netflix take a $200 million budget, a couple of movie stars, and the directors behind some of the biggest movies of all time, and make something as bland as The Gray Man? That’s the question audiences will be left with after watching this latest film from… Read More Review: The Gray Man
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Did Richard Linklater really go to the moon as a kid? Not likely, but his latest film, the very charming and sweetly nostalgic Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, will make you believe he might have for a little over ninety minutes. Done in a similar rotoscoped animation… Read More Netflix Review: Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Lost Daughter is nominated for Best Actress (Olivia Colman), Best Supporting Actress (Jessie Buckley) and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 94th Academy Awards. What does it mean to be a bad mother? And is the feeling that you aren’t doing a good enough job something that all… Read More Review: The Lost Daughter
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Adam McKay is a director who has gone from making off the wall comedies like Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers to Oscar-winning prestige pictures like the financial satire The Big Short (which was genuinely very good) and the Dick Cheney biopic Vice (which was uneven but still… Read More Review: Don’t Look Up
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Leave it to Jane Campion, the filmmaker behind 1993’s The Piano who hasn’t directed a feature since Bright Star in 2009, to craft one of the finest explorations of so-called toxic masculinity in her stunning Western The Power of the Dog. Masterfully directed by Campion, who understands how long… Read More Review: The Power of the Dog
By John Corrado The Haunting of Bly Manor is creator Mike Flanagan’s followup to his 2018 Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House. This second instalment in the anthology series brings back some of the same actors in different roles to tell a whole new, completely unconnected story. The series, which premiered on Netflix in 2020… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Haunting of Bly Manor
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The stress of turning thirty, and measuring yourself against other artists who found success at a young age, is one of the prevailing themes in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s very good directorial debut tick, tick…BOOM!, a musical film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical stage show of the same name. This… Read More Review: tick, tick…BOOM!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Twenty years after the release of his breakout film Training Day, director Antoine Fuqua has crafted a different type of cop thriller in The Guilty, a Netflix film that is being given a short theatrical run before its streaming release. The film is actually a remake of director… Read More Review: The Guilty
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, the director’s new zombie heist movie that is premiering on Netflix this weekend, is the sort of genre film that is made by a filmmaker with confidence in his style. And, after Zack Snyder’s Justice League, aka the fabled Snyder Cut, was… Read More Netflix Review: Army of the Dead
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature Among this year’s many Oscar nominees from the streaming giant Netflix is My Octopus Teacher, a surprisingly touching nature documentary that captures the unexpected friendship between a scuba diver and an octopus, from captivating beginning to poignant end. The film… Read More Netflix Review: My Octopus Teacher
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature Like all of Aardman’s productions, it’s clear watching A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon that this film was a labour of love for all involved. The claymation animation is not only incredibly well done, but also a delight to watch, with… Read More Netflix Review: A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature Over the Moon is a brightly coloured animated musical that serves as the feature directorial debut of former Disney animator Glen Keane, who previously won an Oscar for his 2017 short film Dear Basketball. The film has some appealing elements,… Read More Netflix Review: Over the Moon
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song – “Husavik (My Hometown)” It’s hard to talk about the musical comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga without talking about “Husavik (My Hometown),” the rousing power ballad that has gotten the film a surprise Oscar nomination for… Read More Netflix Review: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song – “Io Sì (Seen)” Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, The Life Ahead mainly serves as a late-career showcase for Italian actress Sophia Loren. Now in the twilight of her career, it’s easy to think of the film as a… Read More Netflix Review: The Life Ahead
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) 2021 Academy Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay An Indian entrepreneur’s rise from the bottom to the top of the class system is charted in filmmaker Ramin Bahrani’s latest film The White Tiger, a dark and incredibly entertaining drama that kept me hooked from start to blistering finish.… Read More Netflix Review: The White Tiger
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