By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Disney’s new version of Pinocchio, which is being released direct to streaming as part of this year’s Disney+ Day programming, is the studio’s latest live action remake of a beloved animated classic, and it’s maybe the weakest one they have put out yet. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who… Read More Disney+ Review: Pinocchio
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Cars on the Road, which premieres on Disney+ tomorrow as part of their annual Disney+ Day programming, is a short episodic series from Pixar Animation Studios that finds trusty tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) reuniting for a road trip.… Read More Disney+ Review: Cars on the Road
By John Corrado In addition to Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection being released this week, Paramount is also releasing two different standalone editions of Robert Wise’s original 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture to mark the anniversary of when Star Trek first aired on TV in September 1966. Previously only available as… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition – The Complete Adventure
By John Corrado With September 8th marking the anniversary of when Star Trek first aired on CBS in 1966, Paramount is dipping back into the archives this month with the release of Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection, featuring the first half-dozen films in the franchise in 4K Ultra HD. Starting with director… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Minions: The Rise of Gru is a sequel to the 2015 film Minions, which was itself a prequel to the three Despicable Me films, showing the origins of those little yellow guys who speak gibberish and have taken the world by storm. And, five films deep into this… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Minions: The Rise of Gru (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a follow up to the hit 2020 film that brought the iconic SEGA video game character to the big screen, and it does what a sequel should do. It’s a bit bigger in scope, introduces a few new characters, and even leaves things… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Sonic the Hedgehog 2
By John Corrado In 1987, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello reunited for Back to the Beach, a lighthearted and surprisingly enjoyable tribute to the “beach movies” that made them teen idols over two decades earlier in the 1960s. The film, which Paramount recently released for the first time on Blu-ray, finds Avalon and Funicello playing… Read More Blu-ray Review: Back to the Beach (1987)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Carmen, the third feature from writer-director Valerie Buhagiar, is a Canadian-Maltese co-production (it closed the Canadian Film Fest earlier this year) that is set in a small village in Malta. The title character, Carmen (Natasha McElhone), is the sister of the local priest (Henry Zammit Cordina), whose life… Read More Review: Carmen
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Please note that there are spoilers for the 2009 film Orphan in this review. The idea of making a prequel to the 2009 film Orphan thirteen years after the fact with lead actress Isabelle Fuhrman, who was a child at the time and is now in her mid-20s, reprising… Read More Review: Orphan: First Kill
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Emily (Aubrey Plaza), the central character in the aptly titled Sundance crime drama Emily the Criminal, is a young woman in Los Angeles whose designation as a law-breaker is one that she seemingly can’t escape from. The opening scene finds her being blindsided by a job interviewer who tries… Read More Review: Emily the Criminal
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) I Am Groot, the latest Marvel series premiering on Disney Plus, isn’t really a series at all, but rather a collection of brief little shorts featuring Guardians of the Galaxy breakout star Baby Groot (voiced once again by Vin Diesel) going on a series of adventures between the… Read More Disney+ Review: I Am Groot
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) Firestarter is the second adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 novel of the same name, following the 1984 film that starred a young Drew Barrymore. This Blumhouse-produced remake is intended as a modern upgrade, but it’s actually one of the blandest King adaptations, struggling to, well, get any sort… Read More Blu-ray Review: Firestarter (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane), Prey is the fifth instalment in the Predator franchise (seventh if you count the spinoffs Alien vs. Predator and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem). The twist is that it’s actually a prequel to the 1987 original, that is set in the Comanche… Read More Disney+ Review: Prey
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Mr. Malcolm’s List is a romantic dramedy set in the 1800s that mainly serves as a sincere tribute to Jane Austen (I would say “fan fiction,” but that perhaps has a more negative connotation than what I wish to convey here), offering a fairly enjoyable entry into the… Read More VOD Review: Mr. Malcolm’s List
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Ali & Ava, the latest film from British writer-director Clio Barnard, is a low-key love story between Ali (Adeel Akhtar) and Ava (Claire Rushbrook), two lonely working class folks in the United Kingdom who come from different backgrounds (him British-Pakistani and her Irish-born), but form a close bond… Read More Review: Ali & Ava
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum team up in the romantic adventure comedy The Lost City, and it’s an example of a film that is actually surprisingly kinda good, simply because it delivers exactly what we want. Bullock’s Loretta Sage is a romance novelist, who has channelled her genuine… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Lost City
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Nope, the third film written and directed by Jordan Peele, completes the trifecta of modern genre movies that he started with Get Out and Us, and continues his winning streak as a filmmaker. While it’s worth addressing up front that Nope doesn’t have the same type of social… Read More Review: Nope
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Michael Bay’s Ambulance is a refreshingly back-to-basics film from the director, that sees him stepping away from the increasing tedium of the Transformers franchise to offer a fairly straight forward but entertaining chase movie set on the streets of Los Angeles. The film still features the over the… Read More Blu-ray Review: Ambulance (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado Please note that this is primarily a review of the Blu-ray release. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original theatrical review of The Northman right here. Robert Eggers’ Viking epic The Northman, one of the best movies of the year so far, is being released on… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Northman (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) DreamWorks Animation’s The Bad Guys, adapted from the book series by Aaron Blabey, is an animated heist movie that riffs on everything from Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction and the Ocean’s Eleven movies. And it’s a lot of fun. Filled with car chases, twists, and double crossings galore,… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Bad Guys (Collector’s Edition)
The Joy of Movies 