By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When her husband Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) is killed during a heist gone wrong, Veronica (Viola Davis) enlists the help of the widows of the other men involved in the job – Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) – to finish the job and… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Widows

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Lara (Victor Polster) is a teen girl in Belgium who is working hard to realize her dreams of becoming a ballerina, having been accepted into a prestigious ballet academy. She also happens to be transgender, having been born in a male body, and is in the process of chemically… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Girl

By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The directorial debut of actor Max Minghella, Teen Spirit follows Violet (Elle Fanning), a 17-year-old in a small town in the Isle of Wight who dreams of becoming a pop star. Despite her mother’s (Agnieszka Grochowska) best wishes, who would rather that her daughter just remain singing in the… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Teen Spirit

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from director Jason Reitman, The Front Runner is a polished and expertly acted dramatization of Gary Hart’s failed 1988 presidential bid, working as a cautionary tale that is particularly relevant in this current political climate. The film unfolds over three weeks, and opens with Colorado Senator… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Front Runner

By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) With its silver body and gull-wing doors, the DeLorean sports car has become an iconic part of pop culture history through its usage as a time machine in the Back to the Future films. But what’s lesser known is the wild true story involving the creator of the… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Driven

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from writer-director-star Emilio Estevez, The Public centres around Stuart Goodson (Estevez), a local librarian who ends up in the middle of a standoff with Detective Bill Ramstead (Alec Baldwin) when a group of homeless men led by Jackson (Michael K. Williams) occupy the Cincinnati Public Library… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Public

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a kindergarten teacher in New York going through a bit of a midlife crisis, seemingly unhappy with her family life. When she overhears one of her young students, Jimmy (Parker Sevak), reciting a poem he has written, she is convinced that he is… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Kindergarten Teacher

By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest film from David Lowery, following his haunting minimalist drama A Ghost Story and his charming remake of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, The Old Man & The Gun is as light as a feather, and just as buoyant. The film recounts the true story of Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford),… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Old Man & The Gun

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on the bestselling young adult of the same name by Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give is a gripping and well made big screen adaptation that provides proof of the ability that even the most commercially viable movies can have to tell powerful and relevant stories. The… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Hate U Give

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest from writer-director Nicole Holofcener, this time working from a book by Ted Thompson, The Land of Steady Habits centres on Anders Hill (Ben Mendelsohn), a middle aged man who divorced his wife (Edie Falco) and retired from his job in finance in an attempt to reinvent… Read More #TIFF18 Review: The Land of Steady Habits

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on Garrard Conley’s memoir of the same name, Boy Erased focuses on Jared (Lucas Hedges), a young man who gets outed at college, and is sent by his Baptist preacher father (Russell Crowe) to a gay conversion camp run by the “ex-gay” councillor Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton).… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Boy Erased

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Damian Chazelle follows up his Oscar-winnings films Whiplash and La La Land with First Man, a space race drama that follows Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) over seven years as he prepares to become the first man to walk on the moon. The film charts his journey from his… Read More #TIFF18 Review: First Man

By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) For his directorial debut, Bradley Cooper has delivered the third remake of A Star is Born, following the 1937 original which received new iterations in 1954 and 1976, and the results are pretty great. This time around, the story involves Jackson Maine (Cooper), a washed up country star… Read More #TIFF18 Review: A Star is Born

By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) is a working class Italian-American family man who works as a bouncer at a New York night club. Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a renowned classical pianist of Jamaican descent who is embarking on a tour throughout the Deep South of 1962, a… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Green Book

By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Claire Denis does sci-fi in High Life, and the results are as confounding and maybe even weirder than you expect from the French auteur, who is also working in English for the first time. The film opens with Monte (Robert Pattinson) alone on a spaceship, tending to his baby… Read More #TIFF18 Review: High Life

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) When Bridget (Hilary Swank) returns home to help deal with her mother (Blythe Danner), who is rapidly progressing into Alzheimer’s, she also finds herself having to deal with the drama of her father (Robert Forster) not being ready to have his high school sweetheart leave home, as her… Read More #TIFF18 Review: What They Had

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Franky (Josh Wiggins) is a popular high schooler who has his world upended after his 17th birthday party leads to a drunken but reciprocal sexual encounter with his best friend Ballas (Darren Mann). The encounter leaves Franky struggling to define his own sexuality, as bullying amps up at… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Giant Little Ones

By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Jonah Hill, in his directorial debut, has delivered one of the best movies of the festival with Mid90s. The indie flick follows Stevie (Sunny Suljic), a kid in 1995 who is looking for a sense of belonging that he isn’t getting at home with his single mother (Katherine… Read More #TIFF18 Review: Mid90s

By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following up his Oscar-winning masterpiece Moonlight, Barry Jenkins brings James Baldwin’s work to the screen with a highly lyrical sensibility in his latest film If Beale Street Could Talk. Based on Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name, the film tells the story of Tish Rivers (Kiki Layne)… Read More #TIFF18 Review: If Beale Street Could Talk