By John Corrado The origins of Girls Like Girls, the feature directorial debut of singer, songwriter and actress Hayley Kiyoko, stem back to her 2015 song “Girls Like Girls” and the music video she co-directed for it. That video for the song, which became a queer anthem of the mid-2010s, got expanded into Kiyoko’s 2023… Read More Movie Review: Girls Like Girls
By John Corrado Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, the actress-turned-filmmaker’s followup to her Oscar-nominated directorial debut The Lost Daughter, is an ambitious genre mashup of horror movie, detective picture, musical, and feminist revisionism. Setting her film in the 1930s, Gyllenhaal uses Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a blueprint for an entirely new reimagining of the story, crafting… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Bride!
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto Kenny Loggins is the latest musical artist to get a career retrospective in the form of a documentary. Directed by Dori Berinstein, Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart is a portrait of the musician, who scored massive… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto When Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police in Iran for violating the country’s mandatory hijab laws, and later died in custody, her death sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement when activists would risk and in… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: A War on Women
By John Corrado The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto The world is facing a loneliness epidemic, with people starved for connection but struggling to meet each other in real life. Dating apps are filling that void, but come with their own set of challenges; these apps… Read More #HotDocs26 Review: Love Apptually
By John Corrado In Mile End Kicks, the very enjoyable sophomore feature from former Toronto film critic Chandler Levack following her excellent directorial debut I Like Movies, we follow a young music critic trying to figure things out in her early twenties. In many ways, Mike End Kicks plays like a companion piece to I… Read More Movie Review: Mile End Kicks
By John Corrado Alpha is the third feature from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, whose previous films Raw and Titane both shocked and repulsed audiences while drawing critical acclaim. For Ducournau to follow up a film as thrilling and visionary as her sophomore feature Titane was always going to be a nearly impossible task, especially after… Read More Movie Review: Alpha
By John Corrado A homeless woman takes a Seattle tow truck company to court when the 1991 Toyota Camry she’s been living out of gets towed in director Stephanie Laing’s Tow, a based-on-a-true-story dramedy produced by and starring Rose Byrne. Byrne stars in the film as Amanda Ogle, a recovering alcoholic drifting around Seattle struggling… Read More Movie Review: Tow
By John Corrado Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is one of the big Oscar contenders this year, and the film is now available on physical media, including 4K Ultra HD. I praised this one when I saw it at TIFF (you can read my full review right here), and named it one of the best movies of… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Hamnet (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado In Midwinter Break, the feature directorial debut of British National Theatre director Polly Findlay, Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds star as an older married couple on vacation in Amsterdam. Stella (Manville) and Gerry (Hinds) are originally from Ireland, but have lived together in Glasgow for years. It’s clear from the opening scenes… Read More Movie Review: Midwinter Break
By John Corrado Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” (those quotation marks are an intentional stylistic choice) is the Promising Young Woman and Saltburn filmmaker’s take on the classic Emily Brontë novel from the 1840s. Fennell’s adaptation is a mildly revisionist and risqué take on Brontë. This is her version of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff’s doomed love… Read More Movie Review: “Wuthering Heights”
By John Corrado The title of writer-director Hailey Gates’ pretty good Iraq War satire Atropia refers to the name of an elaborate, fully functional set located in the California desert that serves as a training ground for the United States military. It’s the name of a fictional country, because the government can’t legally name the… Read More Movie Review: Atropia
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)
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