By John Corrado The first of Disney’s several live action remakes to be released in theatres this year, Tim Burton’s Dumbo serves as a complete reimagining of the studio’s 1941 animated classic about a flying baby elephant. The film is coming to Blu-ray this week. I think Burton has done a good job of paying… Read More Blu-ray Review: Dumbo
By John Corrado This week, Disney is releasing a new edition of their 1950 animated classic Cinderella, as part of their current series of Signature Collection releases. While the film’s seventieth anniversary will not be officially celebrated until next year, this is also being sold as an anniversary edition. This has always been one of my… Read More Blu-ray Review: Cinderella: The Signature Collection
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann looks at the bond between six people and their service dogs in her latest documentary Buddy. The subjects here include an elderly German lady who was blinded by an explosion in World War II and has had many service dogs over the years;… Read More Review: Buddy
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Made without the involvement of original series creator Don Mancini, the 2019 version of Child’s Play serves as a completely new reimagining of the 1988 killer doll classic and the multiple sequels that it spawned. The result is a surprisingly solid and fun horror remake that is actually a… Read More Review: Child’s Play
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) I spent the better part of this decade thinking that I didn’t need a fourth Toy Story. The Pixar series that began in 1995 received a heartbreaking and almost unexpectedly perfect conclusion with Toy Story 3 in 2010, so the natural assumption was that the story was done… Read More Review: Toy Story 4
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Jordan Peele burst onto the filmmaking scene with his debut film Get Out in 2017, radically deviating from his career as a comedic actor to establish himself as one of our most exciting new horror directors. The film became a huge hit, and Peele even received a much… Read More Blu-ray Review: Us
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following a similar trajectory to other gritty, ripped from the headlines films like Paul Greengrass’s United 93 and Captain Phillips, and more recently Clint Eastwood’s underrated The 15:17 to Paris, Hotel Mumbai is the latest movie that seeks to dramatize a violent real life attack by recreating it in the… Read More Blu-ray Review: Hotel Mumbai
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A little girl named June Bailey (Brianna Denski) has the magical amusement park from her imagination suddenly become real in Wonder Park, a mediocre new film from Paramount’s animation division that is mildly amusing at times but fails to really live up to its high concept premise. June… Read More Blu-ray Review: Wonder Park
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) An English-language remake of his own acclaimed 2013 Chilean drama Gloria, Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria Bell is an almost beat for beat copy of the original film, except the setting has been changed to Los Angeles to make it more accessible for American audiences. The result is a technically… Read More Blu-ray Review: Gloria Bell
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is an award-winning late night talk show host, whose comedy and interview show Tonight With Katherine Newbury was once a huge ratings draw for her network. But she is quickly losing her place as queen of late night hosts, with her all white and all… Read More Review: Late Night
By John Corrado Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 drama The Godfather, charting the rise to power of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) within the ranks of an Italian-American mafia family under the tutelage of patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), and its 1974 followup The Godfather Part II, which served as both sequel and prequel to the saga, are widely… Read More Blu-ray Review: The Godfather Trilogy: Corleone Legacy Edition
By John Corrado Released in theatres earlier this spring as a prelude to the massive blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, the prequel Captain Marvel arrives on Blu-ray this week. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film serves as an origin story for Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), taking her on a solo adventure in the 1990s that… Read More Blu-ray Review: Captain Marvel
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Ed Hemsler (John Lithgow) is a doomsday prepper in small town America who stockpiles supplies for an apocalypse that he believes is coming. When he spots Ronnie Meisner (Blythe Danner) in the grocery store buying the same brand of canned tuna, he mistakes her for a fellow survivalist… Read More Review: The Tomorrow Man
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The general idea behind Mouthpiece, the latest film from Canadian director Patricia Rozema, is to show the many different sides of a character by having them literally be portrayed by two separate actors. Listed in the credits as Tall Cassandra (Amy Nostbakken) and Short Cassandra (Norah Sadava), Mouthpiece… Read More Review: Mouthpiece
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce explore the rise and fall of infamous automobile mogul John DeLorean in Framing John DeLorean, a hybrid of documentary and narrative film that shifts between interviews and dramatic reenactments featuring Alec Baldwin wearing prosthetics and a wig to portray DeLorean. The… Read More Review: Framing John DeLorean
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) After becoming a hit in theatres, and winning the Best Original Song Oscar for “Shallow,” A Star is Born was re-released in theatres earlier this spring following its initial Blu-ray release, to include about twelve minutes of added footage. This “encore edition” of the film is now available… Read More Blu-ray Review: A Star is Born Encore
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Dexter Fletcher, the director who was brought on to patch up last year’s massively popular Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer was fired from the project, reinvigorates the usual biopic formula by turning Elton John’s life into a full-on musical in Rocketman. Tonally, the film is similar to… Read More Review: Rocketman
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Filmmaker Tasha Hubbard uses the tragic case of Colton Boushie, a young man from the Red Pheasent Cree Nation who was shot to death by white farmer Gerald Stanley on his Saskatchewan farm back in 2016, to explore how Canada’s legal system is still stacked against Indigenous peoples… Read More Review: nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A lot of actors have successfully made the jump to directing over the past few years. In no short order, it’s a list that includes Jordan Peele (Get Out), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, her solo debut), Jonah Hill (Mid90s), and Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born). Now we… Read More Review: Booksmart
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, a documentary about the beloved Canadian folk musician co-directed by Joan Tosoni and Martha Kehoe, opens with Lightfoot watching old footage of himself performing his classic song “For Loving You,” and commenting on how he wishes he hadn’t written something… Read More Review: Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind
The Joy of Movies 