By John Corrado This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. The 94th Oscar nominations have just been announced, and for the first time since 2011 we have gotten a full slate of ten Best Picture nominees, with a lineup that includes Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice… Read More Nominations for the 94th Academy Awards
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) First time director Max Lowe explores his family history in the National Geographic documentary Torn, offering a complex and moving portrait of paternal figures and how families heal in the aftermath of tragedy. Lowe’s father was famed mountain climber Alex Lowe, who died in an avalanche on Shishapangma… Read More Disney+ Review: Torn
By John Corrado Released in theatres on February 14th, 1992, the classic comedy Wayne’s World is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and Paramount is honouring the occasion with an “excellent” new limited edition Blu-ray SteelBook. Produced by Lorne Michaels, the film was a big screen spinoff of the popular Saturday Night Live sketch, starring… Read More Blu-ray Review: Wayne’s World: 30th Anniversary (SteelBook Edition)
By John Corrado The long-awaited legacy sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which serves as a direct continuation of the two classic 1980s films (and fully retcons that misguided 2016 reboot), is being released on Blu-ray this week. Directed by Jason Reitman, taking over the mantle from his father Ivan Reitman, Afterlife introduces us to a new generation… Read More Blu-ray Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife
By John Corrado Clifford the Big Red Dog, which is being released on Blu-ray today from Paramount, is a surprisingly decent live action family film that brings Norman Bridwell’s classic series of children’s books about the adventures of a young girl and her big red dog to life. The film stars Darby Camp as Emily… Read More Blu-ray Review: Clifford the Big Red Dog
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directed by Malcolm Ingram, Clerk. is an entertaining documentary that looks at the career of filmmaker Kevin Smith, offering a complete portrait of him as director, podcaster and comic book fan. Through interviews with a number of people in Smith’s inner circle, the film takes us through the… Read More VOD Review: Clerk.
By John Corrado Last weekend, I published my list of the best movies of 2021. Now it’s time for my rundown of the best non-fiction films of last year. I spent the last week catching up on ones that I missed (including the one that became my number one pick, which I missed during its… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2021
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Despite unceremoniously shutting down Blue Sky Studios last year following their acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney continues the company’s signature prehistoric franchise with The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, an in-house spinoff that is being released straight to Disney Plus. The sixth film in the Ice… Read More Disney+ Review: The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The Addams Family 2 is a sequel to the 2019 animated movie, which attempted to revamp the classic characters for a new generation. But the film was somewhat of a forgettable disappointment, especially considering the potential behind doing an animated version of the original Charles Addams comic strips… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Addams Family 2
By John Corrado I’m going to keep the preamble to this list short. As we all know, 2021 wasn’t exactly a great year, with the COVID-19 pandemic still with us and a return to “normal” (whatever the heck that word even means anymore) seeming like a goal that keeps getting pushed further down the road… Read More The Best Movies of 2021
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Schrödinger’s Cat is a paradoxical thought experiment that involves a hypothetical cat in a box with a vile of poison, and asks if the cat is alive or dead. As the thought experiment goes, it’s both and neither. Either outcome remains possible until we open the box to… Read More VOD Review: Marionette
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Tender Bar, George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, is an adaptation of writer J.R. Moehringer’s memoir of the same name about growing up on Long Island and hanging out at his uncle’s bar. The result is a pretty standard coming of age movie that still has a decent… Read More Review: The Tender Bar
By John Corrado Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, which is being released on Blu-ray this week, finds the British filmmaker, who is best known for his genre mashups, playing around in the sandbox of psychological thriller. The film follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer who is obsessed with the culture of the… Read More Blu-ray Review: Last Night in Soho
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) No Time to Die is the 25th film in the James Bond franchise, and the fifth one starring Daniel Craig, ending his tenure as Ian Fleming’s iconic character and completing a story arc that began with Craig’s first appearance as Bond in Casino Royale way back in 2006.… Read More Blu-ray Review: No Time to Die
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, following his Oscar-nominated courtroom drama The Trial of the Chicago 7, Being the Ricardos is a surprisingly enjoyable biopic of actress Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and her real life husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), who starred alongside her as… Read More Review: Being the Ricardos
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Denzel Washington doing Shakespeare. That’s the pitch for The Tragedy of Macbeth, which finds the actor returning to the pool of William Shakespeare following his supporting turn in Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, to take on the plum leading role of Macbeth. Washington’s… Read More Review: The Tragedy of Macbeth
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza opens with a tracking shot through a high school that introduces us to its two protagonists; the 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and the 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim). It’s picture day. Gary is a child actor who is there to get his… Read More Review: Licorice Pizza
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Halloween Kills is technically the twelfth film in the slasher movie franchise (counting the two Rob Zombie remakes), but chronologically it follows the surprisingly good 2018 legacy sequel Halloween, which was itself a direct continuation of John Carpenter’s 1978 original. Like the 2018 film, Halloween Kills is once… Read More Blu-ray Review: Halloween Kills
By John Corrado The directorial debut of Ernest R. Dickerson (Spike Lee’s cinematographer), the 1992 drama Juice follows Q (Omar Epps), Bishop (Tupaac Shakur), Raheem (Khalil Kain) and Steel (Jermaine Hopkins), four friends in Harlem who are after the power they call “juice.” Following the 25th anniversary Blu-ray release in 2017, Paramount has now given… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Juice: 30th Anniversary
By John Corrado Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the filmmaker’s adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel, was one of the biggest movies of 2021. It’s a massive film in terms of scope that delivers immersive visuals and rich world-building, brought to life with an all-star cast. This is the definition of a… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Dune
The Joy of Movies 