By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Set in July of 1995 at the height of the conflict between Bosnia and Serbia, the Oscar-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida? is a gripping and startling film that takes these historical events from nearly three decades ago and puts them into sharp, chilling focus. This conflict is explored through… Read More VOD Review: Quo Vadis, Aida?
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dramatizing the life of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (Pål Sverre Hagen), who became the first man to reach the South Pole with his team of explorers on December 14th, 1911, Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition offers a mix of adventure movie and biographical drama that is mostly successful on… Read More VOD Review: Amundsen: The Greatest Expedition
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Women make up less than three percent of all technical and production roles in the music industry, and in 2019, only five out of the top one hundred DJs were women. These are some of the surprising stats presented to us in director Stacey Lee’s documentary Underplayed, which… Read More VOD Review: Underplayed
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Sugar Daddy, which is premiering tonight as the opening film of the virtual Canadian Film Fest on Super Channel, serves as a compelling showcase for its star Kelly McCormack. McCormack, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, stars as Darren, a classic “starving artist” living in Toronto. She works… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Sugar Daddy
By John Corrado One of the movies that I got to see at TIFF last year was Shiva Baby, a tightly wound and sharply written comedy set at a shiva that serves as a breakout film for both first time feature director Emma Seligman and star Rachel Sennott. The film is now available to rent… Read More Shiva Baby is Now Available to Rent on the digital TIFF Bell Lightbox
By John Corrado Pixar’s latest film Soul, which was released to Disney Plus subscribers on Christmas Day, is now available on Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, DVD and Digital platforms as of today. The film follows Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a middle school band teacher and aspiring jazz musician whose soul leaves his body… Read More Pixar’s Soul is Now Available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a film that can be fully enjoyed on its own as a piece of rousing superhero entertainment, but the experience grows even richer when you take into account the full history behind how it came to be released. To briefly recap this history,… Read More Review: Zack Snyder’s Justice League
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The feature debut of Canadian co-directors Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, who’ve made several short films together over the past few years, Violation is a confidently made first feature that serves as an incredibly dark entry into the revenge thriller genre. Sims-Fewer stars in the film as Miriam,… Read More VOD Review: Violation
By John Corrado Florian Zeller’s The Father, which the writer/director adapted from his own stage play of the same name, was among the best movies that I saw at TIFF in 2020, and it has just been lauded with six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Now more audiences will finally get a chance to see… Read More The Father is Now Playing in Select Theatres, and On Demand as of March 26th
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Two weeks after the end of WandaVision, Marvel is debuting their new series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney Plus, the latest small screen tie-in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I had a chance to preview the first episode in the six-part series, and I’m pleased… Read More Disney+ Review: The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (Episode 1)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Five students from different parts of the world who all share a similar entrepreneurial spirit come together to compete at the 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards in the new National Geographic documentary Own the Room, which is premiering on Disney Plus this weekend. The five students that the… Read More Disney+ Review: Own the Room
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Alfred “Boogie” Chin (Taylor Takahashi), the main character in Fresh Off the Boat producer Eddie Huang’s feature directorial debut Boogie, is a Taiwanese-American teenager in Queens, New York who dreams of playing professional basketball. Working from his own screenplay, Huang has crafted a film that does a pretty… Read More Review: Boogie
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Robin Wright makes her feature directorial debut with the simply titled Land, a small but emotionally effective portrait of a woman wounded by grief who leaves her life in the city behind to find solitude in the wild. Wright stars in the film as Edee. When we first… Read More VOD Review: Land
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) An elderly couple gets a chance to relive their youth over one magical night in Us Again, a charming and poignant new short film from Walt Disney Animation Studios. It will be playing in theatres in front of Raya and the Last Dragon starting this weekend, before being released… Read More Disney+ Review: Us Again
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney’s 59th official animated film, has some of the hallmarks of a Disney Princess movie, while also feeling like somewhat of a departure for the studio. Not only is this their first film to feature a Southeast Asian Princess, there are also no… Read More Disney+ Review: Raya and the Last Dragon
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The World to Come, the latest in a string of period piece lesbian romances, is a film that suffers in comparison to Ammonite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. But even if it hadn’t been released in such close proximity to those better, thematically similar films, this… Read More VOD Review: The World to Come
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Mauritanian, a new legal thriller directed by Kevin Macdonald and featuring a starry cast, dramatizes the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi and the years he spent awaiting a trial at Guantanamo Bay, where he was kept imprisoned with no formal charges laid against him. Slahi is… Read More VOD Review: The Mauritanian
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) There are some films that leave me scratching my head as to why they have been so acclaimed. And Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a belated sequel to the 2006 film which finds actor Sacha Baron Cohen reprising his role as fictional Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev, is one of them.… Read More Review: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Palm Springs, the new time loop romantic comedy from the Lonely Island guys, is a film that takes many of its cues from the 1993 classic Groundhog Day, a work so iconic that it’s title has become shorthand for every other story of this type. Andy Samberg, who… Read More Review: Palm Springs
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of Disney’s hottest and most profitable properties. The simple fact is that superheroes are hugely popular with audiences, and this is exactly what Disney is hoping to capitalize on with their new film Flora & Ulysses, which premieres on Disney+ today. The… Read More Disney+ Review: Flora & Ulysses
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