By John Corrado Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the lead character in British writer-director Mike Leigh’s new movie Hard Truths, is a bitter woman with a chip perpetually on her shoulder. She is miserable every time she steps out into the world, but not much happier at home either, where she is constantly nagging after husband… Read More Movie Review: Hard Truths
By John Corrado The first English-language feature from Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door is an involving and morally complex – if occasionally uneven – melodrama, built around a pair of compelling performances from Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The film (which was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice) opens with Moore’s Ingrid,… Read More Movie Review: The Room Next Door
By John Corrado It’s rare to come across a film that feels like it is reinventing the form. Yet, in bringing Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys to the screen, director RaMell Ross takes a radically new approach to adapting a novel; he presents the entire film from the perspective of his characters, through unique,… Read More Movie Review: Nickel Boys
By John Corrado Director Maura Delpero’s Vermgilio, Italy’s International Feature submission for the Oscars, is set at the end of World War II in 1944, but the war is happening entirely offscreen. Instead, this is a slow-burn slice-of-life portrait of a large family in the mountain village of Vermiglio. The patriarch of the family is Cesare… Read More Movie Review: Vermiglio
By John Corrado Director James Mangold arguably perfected the modern biopic structure with Walk the Line, his Oscar-winning 2005 portrait of country singer Johnny Cash. Mangold now returns to this genre and time period with his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (in fact, Cash is even featured here as well, as a contemporary of Dylan’s). Dylan, one… Read More Movie Review: A Complete Unknown
By John Corrado Writer-director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl is a compelling modern twist on the erotic thriller, that centres around a woman with power who gets turned on by giving it up, as she embarks on an inappropriate workplace relationship with a male intern. These fascinating power dynamics are portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson,… Read More Movie Review: Babygirl
By John Corrado At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, a group of Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village and kidnapped Israeli athletes, holding them hostage in a tense standoff. Director Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a movie about this hostage crisis, but somewhat indirectly; the film is based on the true story of the ABC… Read More Movie Review: September 5
By John Corrado If you could radically change your appearance, would you? That’s the question at the centre of writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, a fascinating mix of piercing character study and absurdist, Charlie Kaufman-esque tragicomedy. Schimberg’s film is a sort of modern riff on Flowers for Algernon, the classic book in which a man with… Read More Movie Review: A Different Man
By John Corrado The third entry in Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy depicting the interior lives of famous women (following the one-two punch of Jackie and Spencer), Maria is the Chilean filmmaker’s portrait of the Italian opera singer Maria Callas. Larraín aims to do for Callas what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana in his previous films, which boasted… Read More Movie Review: Maria
By John Corrado Payal Kapadia, the filmmaker behind the 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, makes her narrative feature debut with All We Imagine as Light. Kapadia’s film, which was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year, is a touching and very heartfelt slice-of-life portrait of women in modern India. The film mainly focuses… Read More Movie Review: All We Imagine as Light
By John Corrado Thirty years after Forrest Gump, director Robert Zemeckis reunites with stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as well as screenwriter Eric Roth for the ambitious drama Here. An adaptation of the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here is built around the conceit of watching life unfold in a single location across millions of years, from… Read More Movie Review: Here
By John Corrado The first trailer has just been released for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which A24 acquired out of Venice. The film is an adaption of the William S. Burroughs novel of the same name, and stars Daniel Craig in the leading role as a gay man roaming about Mexico after the war. I wasn’t… Read More Trailer Released for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer
By John Corrado The choice to make a Donald Trump biopic at this point in time, when the man himself is already so ubiquitous and overexposed in our media landscape, is both an obvious and somewhat curious one. In our polarized age, the mere presence of a film like this raises questions about what audience… Read More Movie Review: The Apprentice
By John Corrado Saoirse Ronan takes on the role of a young alcoholic in The Outrun. It’s a role that allows the actress to deliver an incredible performance showcasing her full depth and range, as the drama depicts the addiction and recovery process as an ongoing journey. It’s based on author Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the… Read More Movie Review: The Outrun
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest film from Irish director John Crowley (Brooklyn), We Live in Time mostly works as a genuine romantic tear-jerker, centred around a young couple in London. Tobias (Andrew Garfield)… Read More #TIFF24 Review: We Live in Time (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ”Peace through strength.” That was the famous adage of President Ronald Reagan when it came to his foreign policy approach, and taking on the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union during the final stages of the Cold War. This motto also provides the backbone for director Sean McNamara’s Reagan, a new biopic that… Read More Movie Review: Reagan
By John Corrado Netflix has released the first trailer for The Piano Lesson, one of their big awards contenders that will be screening at TIFF next month. The film is produced by Denzel Washington, and is the latest in his series of film adaptations of August Wilson plays, following the Oscar-winning films Ma Rainey’s Black… Read More Trailer Released for Netflix’s The Piano Lesson
By John Corrado In her confident feature directorial debut Good One, emerging filmmaker India Donaldson uses the premise of a father-daughter camping trip to offer an engaging, fascinatingly stripped down character study. The protagonist is Sam (Lily Collias), a 17-year-old girl who ends up on a weekend camping trip to the Catskills with her dad… Read More Movie Review: Good One
By John Corrado The title of Sing Sing refers to the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York, located on the Hudson River. But the film’s title, with its evocation of music and singing, also serves as a jubilant nod to the spirited performances being staged by the men within the maximum security prison. It’s… Read More Movie Review: Sing Sing
By John Corrado Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy, Fifty Shades of Grey), Back to Black is a biopic of British singer Amy Winehouse, who passed away at age 27 from alcohol poisoning. The film is named after her (still incredible) Grammy-winning 2006 album Back to Black, which catapulted her from working-class Camden girl to… Read More Blu-ray Review: Back to Black (Collector’s Edition)
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