By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In her documentary Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, director Shoshannah Stern crafts an engaging, intimate portrait of actress Marlee Matlin, who become the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar for her lead performance in the 1986… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In their documentary Marriage Cops, co-directors Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess take us inside a police station in northern India, where a team of female officers provide marriage counselling to couples experiencing marital problems. It’s a way… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Marriage Cops
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto Shot on luminous 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is a portrait of Agatha Bock, a subject who, in her mid-eighties, is proudly carrying on the traditions of rural farm living in southern Manitoba. The film is directed by… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Agatha’s Almanac
By John Corrado In her feature debut, the crowd-pleasing dramedy Bob Trevino Likes It, writer-director Tracie Laymon crafts a surprisingly tender portrait of an unlikely friendship, drawn from her own life. Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira) is a bubbly but insecure young woman who has a strained relationship with her self-absorbed father Robert (French Stewart). When… Read More Movie Review: Bob Trevino Likes It
By John Corrado Following the poster debut yesterday, A24 has just released the first trailer for writer-director Celine Song’s Materialists. This is Song’s highly anticipated second feature following her acclaimed, Oscar-nominated 2023 debut Past Lives. This one is a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. Johnson plays a New York matchmaker,… Read More First Trailer for Celine Song’s Materialists
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 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 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 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 movie Lee is a biopic of photojournalist Elizabeth “Lee” Miller (played by Kate Winslet), who worked as a photographer for Vogue magazine during World War II. The film serves as the feature directorial debut of cinematographer Ellen Kuras (who first worked with Winslet on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and… Read More Movie Review: Lee
By John Corrado In her debut feature documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon, director Jazmin Jones tries to find the elusive model that became the face of the ubiquitous computer program Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. If you are of a certain age, the educational game is likely responsible for teaching you computer skills. Though Mavis Beacon herself… Read More Movie Review: Seeking Mavis Bacon
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In her new film Sunshine, Filipina writer-director Antoinette Jadaone crafts a gritty and grounded teenage drama, that offers an interesting glimpse at life in the Philippines from a perspective that I hadn’t really seen… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sunshine (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Bird is another gritty, slice-of-life drama from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, that also feels like a bit of a diversion. It is recognizably of a piece with her previous… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Bird (Special Presentations)
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 most basic descriptions of Nightbitch will probably be “that movie where Amy Adams is turning into a dog.” While partially reductive, these descriptions are also sort of correct; but… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Nightbitch (Special Presentations)
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. Léo (Pier-Luc Funk) is a lonely pizza delivery driver in Montreal, who becomes the latest target of John (François Papineau), an alien posing as an older cab driver, who… Read More #TIFF24 Review: You Are Not Alone (Discovery)
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. Jean (Olunike Adeliyi) is a single mother who is back living with her own elderly mother (Maxine Simpson), raising two teenaged kids Tamika (Zahra Bentham) and Tristin (Micah Mensah-Jatoe) in… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Village Keeper (Discovery)
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. Set in a small fishing village in Newfoundland, writer-director Melanie Oates crafts a sort of modern day “Scarlet Letter” in her new film Sweet Angel Baby. Michaela Kurimsky stars… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sweet Angel Baby (Centrepiece)
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. In her latest film The Last Showgirl, director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola) gives a starring role to model and actress Pamela Anderson, fittingly casting her as an… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Last Showgirl (Special Presentations)
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 feature debut of Ryan Cooper and Eva Thomas, who serve as co-writers and co-directors, Aberdeen is a mix of slice-of-life portrait and more serious melodrama. The film is named… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Aberdeen (Discovery)
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. Director Tallulah H. Schwab’s sophomore feature Mr. K is an absurdist tale set inside an old hotel that draws from obvious cinematic sources like The Shining, Barton Fink and Holy… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Mr. K (Platform)
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