By John Corrado A sequel to the 2014 film, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil finds Aurora (Elle Fanning) preparing to marry Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson), leading to increasing tensions between her stepmother Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and the human world, with Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) waging an all-out war against the magical realm. The film is arriving… Read More Blu-ray Review: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) There were few films in 2019 that made as much pre-release noise as Joker did. Directed by Todd Phillips, in a radical change of pace from comedies like The Hangover and Old School, the R-rated film offers a dark and gritty take on the Batman villain’s origin story that… Read More Blu-ray Review: Joker
By John Corrado With 2019 officially in the rearview mirror, and 2020 already a few days in, it’s time for my countdown of the best movies of last year. It was a year that saw the release of some great movies, and also closed out a decade of moviegoing that saw the release of some… Read More The Best Movies of 2019
By John Corrado The calendars have already turned over to 2020, but 2019 would not be complete without my annual countdowns of the best movies and documentaries of the previous year. Per tradition, I have once again broken up these lists, because I want to pay tribute to as many of these films as possible.… Read More The Best Documentaries of 2019
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Some movies get better the second time you watch them and, for me at least, Uncut Gems, the latest film from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie following up their brilliant, live-wire 2017 thriller Good Time, is absolutely one of them. In fact, my rating jumped up by a… Read More Review: Uncut Gems
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Despite the fact that it takes place over a hundred years ago, 1917 is a World War I drama that has an immediacy to it, heightened by the fact that the film is presented entirely in the form of one single take, shot with stunning dynamism by the… Read More Review: 1917
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a semi autobiographical book about four sisters growing up in New England during the Civil War, was initially published in the late 1860s, and it has been adapted for the screen multiple times since then. Perhaps the most famous of these adaptations include… Read More Review: Little Women
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The latest film from Blue Sky Studios, and the first to be released by Disney following the Fox merger, the long-delayed flick Spies in Disguise is an animated action comedy that follows the adventures of Lance Sterling (Will Smith), a superstar spy who gets turned into a pigeon… Read More Review: Spies in Disguise
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Terrence Malick used to take long hiatuses between his films, but the reclusive director has become quite prolific in the years since his 2011 magnum opus The Tree of Life, having released multiple films since then. Since The Tree of Life at the start of this decade, the filmmaker… Read More Review: A Hidden Life
By John Corrado Christmas is just under a week away. Hanukkah starts on December 22nd. It’s gift giving season, and here is my holiday gift guide, featuring a selection of recent movies, TV shows, books and even a board game that I can personally recommend. There’s something for everyone on this list, and all of… Read More 2019 Holiday Gift Guide
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Following the detour that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi in 2017, J.J. Abrams returns to the director’s chair with frustratingly mixed results in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the third and final piece of the new trilogy that he started for Disney with The Force Awakens in 2015.… Read More Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
By John Corrado Quentin Tarantino’s magnum opus, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a magnificent love letter to Los Angeles in 1969, following faded TV actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), reimagining real life events to reclaim the mythos of that crucial… Read More Blu-ray Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A co-production between DreamWorks Animation and Pearl Studio, the American animation company’s outpost in China, Abominable is the story of a girl and her yeti that plays like a minor response to the success of their How to Train Your Dragon films. Directed by Jill Culton, who has… Read More Blu-ray Review: Abominable
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) One of the most surprising things to happen this year at TIFF was the amount of praise that Hustlers received following its gala premiere. I saw the film about a week before the festival and thought it was a mildly entertaining but thoroughly unremarkable piece of disposable entertainment. I… Read More Blu-ray Review: Hustlers
By John Corrado Directed by Casey Affleck from his own screenplay, Light of My Life is a quietly effective survival drama set in a post-apocalyptic future world where a mysterious illness wiped out the female half of the population, leaving a father (Affleck) struggling to keep his preteen daughter (Anna Pniowsky) hidden from other men.… Read More DVD Review: Light of My Life
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A chance encounter between two Indigenous women in Vancouver leads to an emotional study of abuse and trauma in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, a drama that unfolds almost entirely in real time and explores how hard it can be to help someone who is reluctant… Read More Review: The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Chloe (Lexy Kolker) is a seven year old girl who isn’t allowed to leave the house, kept locked inside by her father (Emile Hirsch), who teaches her survival skills and instills in her that the outside world is a dangerous place. This is the basic setup for Freaks,… Read More Blu-ray Review: Freaks
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The choice to adapt Stephen King’s massive 1986 book It, which was already made into a miniseries in 1990, into two movies was always going to be a gargantuan undertaking, and after the first film was released in 2017 to strong reviews and huge success at the box office,… Read More Blu-ray Review: It: Chapter Two
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) One of the first films to crash and burn this awards season was The Goldfinch, director John Crowley’s adaptation of Donna Tartt’s massive, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 novel of the same name. When the film premiered at TIFF a few days prior to its theatrical release this September, it… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Goldfinch
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) There is something inherently appealing about the idea of seeing Angela Lansbury and Dick Van Dyke, both legends in their own right, back on screen, and I will admit that their presence is what peaked my interest in Buttons: A Christmas Tale. But aside from the fact that they… Read More DVD Review: Buttons: A Christmas Tale
The Joy of Movies 