By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In the documentary Supporting Our Selves, director Lulu Wei looks at the history of Community One, a Toronto organization that was founded… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Supporting Our Selves
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In his informative documentary Commitment to Life, filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Devine, Tab Hunter Confidential), explores the history of the… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: Commitment to Life
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 26th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: The Little Mermaid (Wide Release): Disney’s live action remake of their 1989 animated classic is the biggest of this week’s new releases. As I wrote in my review, “it coasts by on enough nostalgia for the original that it will work… Read More New This Week (05/26/2023): The Little Mermaid, You Hurt My Feelings, Mission Kandahar, & More!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) What do you do when you accidentally overhear a loved one giving their honest opinion about something you’ve done? This is the basic setup for You Hurt My Feelings, the latest film from writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said). The main character is Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a writer in… Read More Review: You Hurt My Feelings
By John Corrado The 2023 edition of the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival starts tonight, and runs until June 4th, with a mix of in-person screenings at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto and some online viewing options. I will be publishing reviews throughout the festival, and below is a preview of some films I’m looking… Read More The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival starts tonight!
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) In Mission Kandahar (which is being released as Kandahar south of the border), Gerard Butler stars as Tom Harris, a covert CIA operative who must travel through Afghanistan with his translator Mo (Navid Negahban), towards an escape point in Kandahar. The film opens with Butler’s Harris on an undercover… Read More Review: Mission Kandahar
By John Corrado The Western series Bonanza has long been one of the crown jewels in NBC’s roster, and Paramount Home Entertainment is now releasing the entire series on DVD in a massive box set that contains all 431 episodes of the show from across its fourteen seasons, which ran from 1959 to 1973. The… Read More DVD Review: Bonanza: The Official Complete Series
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) In Cocaine Bear, director Elizabeth Banks takes the inspired by a true story premise of a bear in the 1980s who consumed copious amounts of cocaine that had been dumped from a drug runner’s plane, and fashions it into an absurdly gory and intentionally cheesy B-movie creature feature… Read More Blu-ray Review: Cocaine Bear
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney’s 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid is credited with kicking off the studio’s fabled Renaissance period, paving the way for a number of animated classics released throughout the 1990s. This makes it an obvious choice for a live action remake in the current IP-driven climate, considering that… Read More Review: The Little Mermaid
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 19th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: Fast X (Wide Release): The family is back in this tenth film in the Fast and the Furious saga, which is the biggest of this week’s new releases. I’ve never really gotten into these films (and have only even seen maybe… Read More New This Week (05/19/2023): Fast X, Master Gardener, White Men Can’t Jump, & More!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director Laurel Parmet explores the push and pull between religion and sexuality in her confident debut film The Starling Girl, which centres around an inappropriate relationship between a teen girl and her youth pastor, and the circumstances that allow it to develop. Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is a… Read More Review: The Starling Girl
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The opening scene of Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener will be very familiar to those who watched the writer-director’s previous two movies The Card Counter and First Reformed. A man sits hunched over at a desk in a dimly lit room writing in a journal, as voiceover narration reveals… Read More Review: Master Gardener
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A remake of Ron Shelton’s 1992 comedy of the same name that starred Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, White Men Can’t Jump is an updated version of the story that strips away a lot of the original’s grit and personality. Like the original, the film is set in… Read More Review: White Men Can’t Jump (Disney+)
By John Corrado The iconic 1983 dance movie Flashdance is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and Paramount is releasing the film for the first time in 4K Ultra HD this month. Directed by Adrian Lyne (a commercial director making his feature debut), and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film centres around Alex (Jennifer Beals),… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Flashdance: 40th Anniversary
By John Corrado In honour of its 25th anniversary this year, Paramount has released the 1998 summer blockbuster Deep Impact for the first time on 4K Ultra HD. Directed by Mimi Leder, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the film unfolds in the twelve months leading up to when a massive comet is expected to… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Deep Impact: 25th Anniversary
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) With a manned mission to Mars now basically a matter of when and not if, one of the biggest questions that remains is how human astronauts will deal with the isolation on the three year mission that it takes to get to the Red Planet. This question is… Read More Review: The Longest Goodbye
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 12th, 2023. Theatrical Releases: BlackBerry (Wide Release): The latest from Canadian indie director Matt Johnson (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche), the tragicomic BlackBerry is a fast-paced and energetic look at the rise and fall of Waterloo, Ontario tech company Research in Motion and their once-mighty BlackBerry,… Read More New This Week (05/12/2023): BlackBerry, STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Crater, & More!
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Aaju Peter, the subject of filmmaker Lin Allluna’s documentary Twice Colonized (which recently had its world premiere as the opening night film of Hot Docs), is an Inuit lawyer who was born in Greenland, but moved to the Canadian Arctic. Living in Iqaluit, Aaju is perhaps most notable… Read More Review: Twice Colonized
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The year is 2257, and a group of kids are living in a mining colony on the moon. For most of them, life on the third rock from the sun is all they have ever known. This is the premise behind Crater, a new sci-fi movie being released… Read More Review: Crater (Disney+)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The rise and fall of Waterloo, Ontario tech company Research in Motion, and their once-mighty BlackBerry, is charted in Canadian director Matt Johnson’s energetic and fast-paced film BlackBerry. This latest feature from Johnson, who previously showed what he is capable of with his DIY indies Operation Avalanche and… Read More Review: BlackBerry
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