By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is an 18th century French artist who is brought by boat to an island where she has been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), ahead of her arranged marriage to a Milanese businessman. But Héloïse is resisting the marriage and doesn’t… Read More Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
By John Corrado Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island was released in theatres a decade ago this month, and now the director’s 2010 film has received a new, limited edition 4K Ultra HD release from Paramount, which comes in a nice steelbook package. Based on Dennis Lehane’s 2003 novel of the same name, which was adapted for… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Shutter Island: 10th Anniversary Limited Edition Steelbook
By John Corrado There you have it folks, the 92nd Academy Awards have come to a close, with Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean film Parasite becoming the first international film in history to take home Best Picture. Yes, I predicted it would happen, as you can see below, but I don’t know if I really believed… Read More My 2020 Oscar Predictions (Now Updated With Winners)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Judy Garland gets the biopic treatment in director Rupert Goold’s Judy, a good movie built around a great performance from Renée Zellweger. The film received a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Makeup and Hairstyling, with Zellweger being the frontrunner to win in the former… Read More Review: Judy
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A timely film about sexual harassment at Fox News, Bombshell had so much potential but, aside from some solid performances, it’s just not very good. The film has some good scenes, but overall it’s an awkward, choppy mix of fact and fiction that ends up feeling like a… Read More Review: Bombshell
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) – the delightfully deranged alter ego of psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel who turned to crime after falling in love with her patient, the Joker – was undoubtedly the breakout star of Suicide Squad, and the best part of that otherwise disappointing movie. Now the comic… Read More Review: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
By John Corrado Serving as both an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 literary sequel to his classic novel The Shining and a direct followup to Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 film version of that book, Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is being released on Blu-ray this week. Along with the version of the film that was released in… Read More Blu-ray Review: Doctor Sleep: Includes Director’s Cut
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) At the start of The Good Liar, Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen) and Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) meet in person for the first time in London, England after chatting online. We learn that her husband just passed away a year earlier, and they are both lonely senior citizens seeking… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Good Liar
By John Corrado ★ (out of 4) There have been a lot of comedies about closed off men becoming unlikely caretakers to kids who help them open up and rediscover the importance of family. It’s a premise that, in the right hands, can offer room for both humour and heart. But Playing with Fire, director… Read More Blu-ray Review: Playing with Fire
By John Corrado Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was one of the true breakout hits of last year. The South Korean director’s brilliant, genre-defying mix of social satire and thriller has been gaining steam since it premiered at Cannes and won the Palme d’Or. It went on to bring in a massive $163 million at the box office,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Parasite
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) “We’re not homeless,” Rosie Davis (Sarah Greene) insists to a family member partway through the Irish drama Rosie, taking issue with their use of the word. “We’re just lost,” she adds, as if trying to convince herself so she doesn’t have to face the truth. When we first… Read More Review: Rosie
By John Corrado The 17th annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival kicks off tonight in Toronto, showcasing a total of six timely and relevant films over the next six nights, most of which played at other Toronto festivals over the past year. All of the screenings will be taking place at the Hot Docs Ted… Read More Previewing the 2020 Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The sixth entry into the Terminator franchise started by James Cameron in 1984, Terminator: Dark Fate serves as a direct follow up to Cameron’s groundbreaking 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day and, for better or for worse, essentially ignores the events of the other three films that happened… Read More Blu-ray Review: Terminator: Dark Fate
By John Corrado One of the most overlooked movies of last year was Edward Norton’s excellent, 1950s-set detective movie Motherless Brooklyn, which he directs and stars in as a New York City private investigator living with Tourette syndrome. The film seemed to come and go in theatres with not enough fanfare, but it’s arriving on Blu-ray… Read More Blu-ray Review: Motherless Brooklyn
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Robert Eggers established himself as a filmmaker to watch with his 2015 debut The Witch, a period piece horror movie set in the 1600s that played with a moody aesthetic and a strong sense of atmosphere. Eggers has more than lived up to this early promise with his… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Lighthouse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The zombie comedy is hardly a new invention, and we already have films like Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland and its recent sequel, the teen romance Warm Bodies, as well as the delightful musical Anna and the Apocalypse to prove it’s a genre mashup that can work. Now… Read More Blu-ray Review: Little Monsters
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Whether you agreed with her or not, there’s simply no denying that Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of the 20th century, a writer whose often controversial opinions were sometimes hurtful and sometimes helpful, but always uniquely hers. Even when her contrarian views put… Read More Review: What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Symbolically named after Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 novel about poverty and injustice, and the beloved musical that it subsequently inspired, director Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables is a modern day fable about racial tensions and police brutality in contemporary France that explores how a series of events can bubble… Read More Review: Les Misérables
By John Corrado Eddie Murphy has been enjoying a bit of a resurgence lately, from his explosive comeback performance in Dolemite Is My Name to the upcoming Coming to America sequel set to arrive at the end of the year. Now one of Murphy’s most famous characters, the street-smart Detroit cop Axel Foley who ends… Read More Blu-ray Review: Beverly Hills Cop 3-Movie Collection
By John Corrado Ang Lee’s Gemini Man was one of the more curious big budget films to be released last year, and it’s arriving on 4K Ultra HD this week in a set that also includes a regular Blu-ray of the film. The film offers the Oscar-winning director a chance to play around with new… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Gemini Man
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