By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Against the Tide, which won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Vérité Filmmaking at Sundance, is a compelling slice-of-life documentary from… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Against the Tide
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Ella Glendining’s Is There Anybody Out There? is a remarkable documentary about disability and ableism, starting as the filmmaker’s own personal journey of… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Is There Anybody Out There?
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Logan Red Crow is a young Blackfoot woman from Siksika First Nation in Alberta, who grew up helping with the horses on her… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Aitamaako’tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Directed by Megan Wennberg (Drag Kids), the documentary Unsyncable follows a group of seniors, ranging from their sixties to their eighties, who have… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Unsyncable
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. When Reyhaneh Jabbari was nineteen years old, she was sentenced to death in Iran for stabbing Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, to stop him from… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Seven Winters in Tehran
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In her investigative documentary Cynara, director Sherien Barsoum reexamines the case of Cindy Ali, a Trinidadian immigrant in Toronto who was convicted of… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Cynara
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo digs into her adolescent memories of first crushes and awkward school dances in You Were My First Boyfriend, which unfolds… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: You Were My First Boyfriend
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 27th to May 7th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. There has been somewhat of a modern resurgence in witchcraft and Wicca from women who see reclaiming these ancient spiritual practises as part… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Coven
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This is the deceptively simple question being asked by the 11-year-old protagonist of Judy Blume’s classic 1970 novel of the same name, a book for middle school readers that was groundbreaking for its frank discussions of taboo topics ranging from religion… Read More Review: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The eighth feature from American indie auteur Kelly Reichardt, Showing Up is recognizably a part of her impressive oeuvre of slice-of-life films about ordinary people going about their lives in Oregon, while also adding some levity to it. The film stars Michelle Williams as Lizzy, a struggling sculptor… Read More Review: Showing Up
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature A Thousand and One, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January, is a mother-son drama defined by its complex lead character, with the filmmaker eschewing easy emotion for something far thornier. The film, which begins in the 1990s, centres around… Read More Review: A Thousand and One
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah), the two protagonists of British filmmaker Raine Allen-Miller’s directorial debut Rye Lane, have their initial meet-cute through the dividing walls in the unisex bathroom of a South London art gallery. Dom is crying in one of the stalls after a bad… Read More Review: Rye Lane (Disney+)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. In How to Get My Parents to Divorce, a family movie from Quebec that plays like a clever inversion of The… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: How to Get My Parents to Divorce
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. The debut film from writer-director Connie Cocchia, When Time Got Louder is a Canadian family drama that explores how a tight-knit… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: When Time Got Louder
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. An absurdist comedy about gender politics that segues into being a psychosexual suburban fantasy, the Quebec film Babysitter is an entertaining… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Babysitter
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Women Talking. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, which received a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, is being released on… Read More Blu-ray Review: Women Talking
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Director Mye Hoang’s Cat Daddies is a charming documentary that focuses on the bonds between a variety of men and their cats, and if you are in any way a cat person, it’s pretty irresistible. Like any good collection of cat videos, the scenes range from lighthearted and… Read More Review: Cat Daddies
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the DVD release of On the Come Up. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review from TIFF right here. After its TIFF premiere and streaming debut in September, the Paramount+ drama On the Come Up is now… Read More DVD Review: On the Come Up
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The directorial debut of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who cut her teeth in the romantic comedy genre writing films like 27 Dresses and The Devil Wears Prada, Your Place or Mine is a Netflix rom-com ready made for Valentine’s Day that delivers exactly what you expect from both… Read More Review: Your Place or Mine (Netflix)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A movie about the two female journalists who helped break the Harvey Weinstein story, She Said is an exploration of the still-recent events which led to the toppling of a Hollywood giant and the start of the #MeToo movement, that struggles at times to be as compelling as… Read More Blu-ray Review: She Said (Collector’s Edition)
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