By John Corrado A series of Faustian bargains underpin Italian director Paolo Strippoli’s confidently directed psychological horror movie The Spiral, which is designed to provoke uncomfortable and disturbing moral questions as well as squirms. The film opens on Alice (Romana Maggiora Vergano) in Rome, being paid a visit by her estranged mother Anna (Jasmine Trinca)… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Spiral (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado In following up her modern cult favourite The Love Witch, director Anna Biller delivers another idiosyncratic and meticulously crafted homage to a bygone era of filmmaking. The sumptuous visuals define Biller’s latest, which serves as a Technicolor tribute to Japanese ghost stories by way of Medieval England, by way of visually striking… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Face of Horror (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado Caleb Hearon gets a starring role in director Kris Rey’s Trash Mountain, a heartfelt and funny indie dramedy that has some familiar beats but presents them in a mostly satisfying way. Hearon stars in the film as Gavin, a gay man living in Chicago, where he has found his people as the… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Trash Mountain (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In her debut feature Tangles, director Leah Nelson crafts an incredibly moving animated film that poignantly handles the devastating experience of Alzheimer’s and how it impacts a whole family. The film is an adaptation of author and illustrator Sarah Leavitt’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. At the start of the… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Tangles (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) gets a much deserved starring role in All That She Wants, a very enjoyable Canadian romantic-comedy from co-directors Scarlett Bermingham and Andrew Rhymer. It’s the sort of film that hits the rom-com beats and does them all very well, while adding some fresh twists to the genre. Murphy… Read More #TIFF26 Review: All That She Wants (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado A local community theatre provides the backdrop for The Debut, Jesse Eisenberg’s third film as a director following his Oscar-winning A Real Pain. If that film was defined not only by its brilliant writing but also the performances of Eisenberg himself and Best Supporting Actor winner Kieran Culkin, this one is built… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Debut (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Adam Samuels (Taron Egerton), the protagonist in writer-director Jonathan Schey’s dark, high concept sex comedy Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, is one of the “nice guys.” We know because this he tells every woman he picks up that he is one. Adam is the lone male working at an art gallery in… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Everybody Wants to F*ck Me (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado There’s little denying that 1976’s underdog boxing movie Rocky is one of the most beloved and enduring American films of all time. It was the Italian-American success story, and now director Peter Farrelly’s rip-roaring crowdpleaser I Play Rocky cleverly turns the making of the movie – and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone’s dogged persistence… Read More #TIFF26 Review: I Play Rocky (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Ancestors is the directorial debut of Irish filmmaker David Turpin, who previously co-wrote the Gothic horror movie The Lodgers. This is also, in its own way, sort of a ghost story, with Turpin using the AIDS epidemic as the backdrop for a film about legacy. Turpin’s film is set in London in… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Ancestors (Discovery)
By John Corrado Director, writer, and star Cody Lightning (Hey, Viktor!) draws from the well of the underdog sports movie for his second feature Smudge the Blades, an enjoyable homegrown hockey movie centred around the Treaty 6 Blades, an Indigenous U-18 hockey team in Northern Alberta. The film opens with a fight breaking out on… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Smudge the Blades (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In her debut feature Still Night, Burning House, Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Carol Nguyen looks inward, focusing on her own family’s history with grief and mental health. The film seeks to tell the story of her Uncle Thach, who was schizophrenic and died from suicide a decade ago, after jumping out a second story… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Still Night, Burning House (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado Fear of “the other” seems to be one of the prevailing themes throughout Quebec filmmaker Alexandre Franchi’s mix of dark comedy and psychological thriller L’Autre, a title that literally translates to “the other.” The film opens with our protagonist Stan (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) undergoing surgery to remove cancer from the bone in his… Read More #TIFF26 Review: L’Autre (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado Canadian author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis returns to the screen with The Betrayers, a well-acted and intriguing adaptation of his own award-winning 2014 novel of the same name. The film centres around Baruch (Michael Aronov), a Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician, who is being pushed to enter into a coalition agreement, while… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Betrayers (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In Being Heumann, the follow up to her Oscar-winning CODA, director Siân Heder dramatizes the true story of Judith Heumann, the prominent disability rights activist who helped break down barriers for accessibility. The result is a film that works as a rousing, inspiring crowdpleaser about the disability rights movement in the 1970s,… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Being Heumann (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The latest movie from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation studio behind beloved modern films like Wolfwalkers, The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells, Julián is very sweet and charming story about a little boy who dreams of being a mermaid. The film centres around the titular Julián (voiced… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Julián (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado In his feature debut River, partially inspired by his 2018 short film In Sound, We Live Forever, director Joshua Giuliano crafts a fun slasher movie built around the deceptively simple yet effective premise of three siblings trapped on a river. The siblings are Lucy (Jane Levy), Carla (Jessica Rothe) and Drew (Max… Read More #TIFF26 Review: River (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado A century after it was first published, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway gets a contemporary adaptation from filmmaker brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, who find a fresh angle by setting their version in modern day Lagos, Nigeria. Sophie Okonedo stars in the film as the titular Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Clarissa (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Director, writer and star Jordan Firstman delivers an accomplished debut feature with Club Kid, a major crowdpleaser which plays like the gay, indie, A24-backed answer to Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy. And it’s something special. Firstman stars in the film as Peter, a club promoter in New York City who is living a… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Club Kid (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado In Fjord, his second Palme d’Or-winner following 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu crafts a complex film that masterfully balances being a family drama, coming-of-age story, and courtroom procedural. This is a film that exists purely in shades of grey, even literally with the washed out… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Fjord (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Toy Gun Bandit, the new film from Quebec writer-director Rémi St-Michel, is a work that feels inspired by the scrappy, propulsive filmmaking of the Safdie brothers. That’s a lofty comparison, to be sure, but their influence is felt throughout this frenetic Québécois crime movie, which serves as both an entertaining and suspenseful… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Toy Gun Bandit (Centrepiece)
The Joy of Movies 