By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. There has been somewhat of a modern resurgence in witchcraft and Wicca from women who see reclaiming these ancient spiritual practises as part… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Coven
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. During the pandemic, Khaleel Sievwright decided to put his skills as a carpenter to good use and started building tiny shelters for homeless… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Someone Lives Here
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Danish filmmaker Christian Einshøj digs into his family history in his symbolic, deeply personal documentary The Mountains. Einshøj draws upon a vast… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: The Mountains
By John Corrado In his over twenty years as an animator at Pixar, Peter Sohn has directed the short film Partly Cloudy, the feature The Good Dinosaur, and also lent his voice to characters in Ratatouille (Emile), Monsters University (Squishy) and Lightyear (Sox). Sohn is now directing Elemental for the studio, which is set to be… Read More Highlights from Pixar’s Elemental Footage Presentation and Q&A with Director Peter Sohn
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. Set in a vague, post-apocalyptic world that has turned much of the population into depressive zombies, Wintertide follows Beth (Niamh Carolan),… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Wintertide
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. A routine traffic stop leads to an increasingly obsessive quest to get the ticket thrown out in court in writer-director Adrian… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Retrograde
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. In How to Get My Parents to Divorce, a family movie from Quebec that plays like a clever inversion of The… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: How to Get My Parents to Divorce
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. The debut film from writer-director Connie Cocchia, When Time Got Louder is a Canadian family drama that explores how a tight-knit… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: When Time Got Louder
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. An absurdist comedy about gender politics that segues into being a psychosexual suburban fantasy, the Quebec film Babysitter is an entertaining… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Babysitter
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. In Moonage Daydream, documentary filmmaker Brett Morgan weaves an exciting and highly cinematic portrait of late music and queer icon David Bowie. The film blends concert footage with old interviews to offer a compelling window into… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Moonage Daydream (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The directorial debut of Korean actor Lee Jung-jae (the Emmy-winning star of Squid Game), Hunt is a political thriller set at the height of tensions between North and South Korea in the 1980s. Lee stars in… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Hunt (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. British writer-director Joanna Hogg follows up her one-two punch of The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II with The Eternal Daughter, a simmering, haunting mother-daughter story that is infused with elements of Gothic Horror. The film… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Eternal Daughter (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq makes his feature debut with Joyland, firmly establishing himself as a very exciting new voice in international cinema. Adapted from his 2019 short film Darling, Sadiq’s film, which was awarded the Un… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Joyland (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The latest film from the currently imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, No Bears is a work of meta filmmaking that weaves together two narratives. Panahi casts himself as a filmmaker who is directing his latest work… Read More #TIFF22 Reviews: No Bears (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. Nan Goldin is an artist and photographer who has set her sights on holding Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to account for creating and pushing the drug OxyContin, and fuelling the opioid crisis ravaging America.… Read More #TIFF22 Review: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The Banshees of Inisherin, the latest brilliantly written character study from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), tells the story of two friends; farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and fiddler Colm… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Banshees of Inisherin (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Director Peter Farrelly made the switch to making “serious” films in 2018 with Green Book, a career pivot that (controversially) won him the People’s Choice Award at TIFF and subsequently the Oscar for Best Picture. Farrelly… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson returns with a big budget follow up to his 2019 surprise hit Knives Out, and I wouldn’t think of spoiling what transpires, but I’m also not going… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Sarah Polley, whose previous trio of films Away from Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell are all in the established canon of celebrated Canadian cinema, makes her long awaited return to directing with Women Talking. An adaptation of the… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Women Talking (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Empire of Light, the latest film from writer-director Sam Mendes, is a solid period piece that also serves as a very personal work from the British filmmaker. It’s set in a seaside town in the 1980s,… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Empire of Light (Special Presentations)
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