By John Corrado H is for Hawk is based on 2014 memoir of the same name by British author and naturalist Helen Macdonald, which told the story of her grief-fuelled friendship with a wild goshawk. Claire Foy stars in the film adaptation as Helen, who we first meet as a shy academic at Cambridge. When… Read More Movie Review: H is for Hawk
By John Corrado The first thing we hear in filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski’s new French-language thriller A Private Life (or Vie privée) is the distinctive strains of The Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer.” The song is leaking into the office of psychiatrist Lillian Steiner (Jodie Foster), as it’s being blasted by her neighbours in the apartment… Read More Movie Review: A Private Life
By John Corrado In her new documentary The Tale of Silyan, the follow-up to her Oscar-nominated Honeyland, director Tamara Kotevska once again explores the balance between people and nature in North Macedonia. In Honeyland, Kotevska focused on an elderly beekeeper having her traditional way of life – and her livelihood – threatened by a new family… Read More Movie Review: The Tale of Silyan
By John Corrado The opening shot of writer-director Mary Bronstein’s intense and suffocating but occasionally darkly funny If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a tight closeup on lead actress Rose Byrne’s face. She is in a doctor’s appointment for her sick daughter (Delaney Quinn), with some disagreement about her treatment plan. The doctor… Read More Movie Review: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
By John Corrado Focus Features has just released the official trailer (and poster) for director Chloé Zhao’s gorgeous Hamnet, which is fresh off of winning the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. You can read my 4-star review from the festival right here. This is clearly the studio’s priority this Oscar season, with Jessie Buckley being… Read More Official Trailer for Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet
By John Corrado Swiped is director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s glossy biopic of Whitney Wolfe (played by Lily James), a co-founder of ubiquitous dating app Tinder and the creator of Bumble. We first meet Wolfe at a Los Angeles meet-up for tech investors, trying to get financial backers for an app that connects orphanages in other… Read More Movie Review: Swiped (Disney+)
By John Corrado In their latest film collaboration Dead Lover, real life couple Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie craft a German Expressionist parody with a real handmade quality to it. Glowicki, who directs the film from a screenplay that she co-wrote with Petrie, stars as a lonely gravedigger. We are told that she smells really,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Dead Lover (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado Chloé Zhao’s emotional period piece Hamnet, based on the personal life of William Shakespeare, explores the art that comes through grief. The film, which is adapted from a book by Maggie O’Farrell (who co-wrote the script with Zhao), also finds the filmmaker back in the intimate, character-driven space of her Oscar-winning Nomadland,… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Hamnet (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado Out Standing is Quebec filmmaker Mélanie Charbonneau’s well-acted biopic of Sandra Perron, who became Canada’s first female infantry officer. The film is adapted from her 2017 memoir, Out Standing in the Field. A proud member of a military family, Perron (who is played in the film by Nina Kiri) joined the Canadian… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Out Standing (Discovery)
By John Corrado Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, is a competent enough filmmaking start for the actress, that is held back by a questionable and awkwardly handled story. The film features a decent performance from June Squibb, with Johansson providing a much-deserved leading role for the actress in her mid-90s. But the screenplay… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Eleanor the Great (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado In her narrative debut Meadowlarks, Canadian filmmaker Tasha Hubbard adapts her 2017 documentary Birth of a Family into a deeply moving family drama. The film follows four Cree siblings – brother Anthony (Michael Greyeyes, delivering one of his finest performances) and his three sisters Connie (Carmen Moore), Gwen (Michelle Thrush), and Marianne… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Meadowlarks (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In her sophomore feature Blood Lines, Métis writer, director, and actress Gail Maurice (Rosie) crafts a family melodrama steeped in Métis culture. This cultural specificity is the main point of intrigue for Maurice’s film, which is also presented largely in the traditional Michif language. The main character is Beatrice (Dana Solomon), a… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Blood Lines (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The Canadian genre film Honey Bunch serves as both the latest collaboration between actors and real life partners Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie, and the sophomore feature from co-directors Madeline Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. In their debut film, the ultra-gritty revenge thriller Violation, Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli showed an appetite for extreme violence.… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Honey Bunch (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Focus Features has now released the first teaser trailer for Hamnet. This is Oscar-winning Nomadland director Chloe Zhao’s return to the awards season race, after her Marvel foray Eternals. This one stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes, telling the tragic story that inspired Hamlet. Their… Read More Teaser Trailer for Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet
By John Corrado My Mother’s Wedding, which actually premiered at TIFF two years ago under the original title North Star, is the directorial debut of actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who also appears in the film as the titular mother getting married. But this uneven comedy-drama mainly focuses on her character Diana Frost’s three adult daughters;… Read More Movie Review: My Mother’s Wedding
By John Corrado A belated sequel to Disney’s 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter who switch places with each other, could have easily gone off the rails. Especially since that film was already a remake of an earlier movie from 1976 (starring Jodie Foster),… Read More Movie Review: Freakier Friday
By John Corrado Elio, the very sweet new animated film from Pixar, uses the age old question of “are we alone in the universe?” to explore the very real topic of loneliness, namely that of the titular Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab). Elio is a space-obsessed kid who has been left living on a military… Read More Movie Review: Elio
By John Corrado In Past Lives, writer-director Celine Song delivered one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time, reinvigorating a love triangle premise to offer a deeply moving exploration of longing and potentially meeting the right person at the wrong time. Expectations have been set incredibly high for Song’s sophomore feature Materialists, which finds… Read More Movie Review: Materialists
By John Corrado Two Women, the latest film from Quebec director Chloé Robichaud (Sarah Prefers to Run), is a raunchy, female-centric comedy that serves as a modern remake of Claude Fournier’s 1970 film Two Women in Gold. Fournier’s original remains an influential piece of Quebec cinema, and Robichaud’s version, which has been adapted and updated… Read More Movie Review: Two Women
By John Corrado Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford) is an aspiring romance novelist who works as a shopkeeper at Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Company. She fantasizes about Jane Austen, and longs for her own love story, but is perpetually single, and struggling with writer’s block. Agathe is the protagonist of writer-director Laura Piani’s delightful new romantic… Read More Movie Review: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
The Joy of Movies 