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
By John Corrado Spending time with future in-laws can be awkward. Add an interfaith dynamic – and a freak accident – into the mix, and you have the recipe for Bad Shabbos, the entertaining and distinctly Jewish indie comedy from director Daniel Robbins. The film, which won the Audience Award at Tribeca in 2024, centres… Read More Movie Review: Bad Shabbos
By John Corrado Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the eighth entry in the action franchise, and it’s fashioned as a sort of swan song for the series that began nearly thirty years ago in 1996. Over the course of this franchise – especially in the last three directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who returns… Read More Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
By John Corrado Sony Pictures has just put out the first trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing. This is the director’s followup to his Oscar-winning The Whale, and it looks much lighter in tone than that film, or really any of Aronofsky’s previous works (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan, etc.). The tone… Read More Trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing
By John Corrado Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp (who previously made the small gem Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), Lilo & Stitch is a delightful, big-hearted family movie that stands out as one of Disney’s best live-action remakes. The original animated film from 2002, about the friendship between a girl and her pet alien,… Read More Movie Review: Lilo & Stitch
By John Corrado Disney has just released the first teaser trailer for Zootopia 2 (which will likely play in front of Lilo & Stitch this weekend). This teaser, which is set to music, doesn’t show us much. But it does give us a glimpse at some of the new worlds that our heroes Nick Wilde… Read More First Teaser for Zootopia 2
By John Corrado Marvel’s Thunderbolts* (that asterisk is actually important) is the latest piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it breathes new life into the franchise by largely going back to basics. Despite being the 36th film in the MCU (not to mention all of the Disney Plus streaming series that have gone along… Read More Movie Review: Thunderbolts*
By John Corrado The Cannes film festival is still going strong over in France, and NEON has just put out the first teaser trailer for French filmmaker Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, one of the most anticipated films in the Official Competition. This is, of course, Ducournau’s follow-up to her 2021 shock Palme d’Or winner Titane (and… Read More Teaser Trailer for Julia Ducournau’s Alpha
By John Corrado There’s this idea introduced at the start of director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners about how every culture has a different word for people who can play music so powerful that it can transcend spirit worlds and “pierce the veil” between the living and the dead. It’s a theme that is prevalent throughout Blues… Read More Movie Review: Sinners
By John Corrado The first teaser trailer has just been released for Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater’s take on the French New Wave and the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless. This is Linklater’s first film in French, and the beloved American indie filmmaker tackling this period in cinema history is reason enough to be… Read More Teaser Trailer for Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague
By John Corrado Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) is undoubtedly a Canadian success story, rising from Scarborough to become one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Tesfaye, who branched out into acting on the HBO series The Idol, now stars as a version of himself in Hurry Up Tomorrow, which serves as a… Read More Movie Review: Hurry Up Tomorrow
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 16th, 2025. Theatrical Releases: Friendship (Limited Release): Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) stars in this absurdist comedy about male friendship. Robinson is Craig Waterman, a lonely suburbanite who befriends his cool guy neighbour (played by Paul Rudd), only for the friendship to go… Read More New This Week (05/16/2025): Friendship, Hurry Up Tomorrow, & More!
By John Corrado How do you even begin to follow an all-timer movie like Parasite, especially after it becomes the first non-English film to win the Oscar for Best Picture? You make Mickey 17, one of the biggest “blank cheque” movies of all time. In following up his landmark Oscar-winner, Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Mickey 17
By John Corrado New releases for the week of May 9th, 2025. Theatrical Releases: Clown in a Cornfield (Wide Release): This mostly enjoyable slasher movie introduces a new creepy clown into the horror canon; Frendo the Clown, who looms large over the small town of Kettle Springs, where lonely teenager Quinn (Katie Douglas) has just… Read More New This Week (05/09/2025): Clown in a Cornfield, Sharp Corner, & More!
By John Corrado In his sophomore feature Sharp Corner, Canadian writer-director Jason Buxton (Blackbird) presents an offbeat character study of a man who becomes obsessed with the car crashes happening on his front lawn. A film about a car crash fixation could have gone in many different directions (like David Cronenberg’s Crash, one of the… Read More Movie Review: Sharp Corner
By John Corrado You have to respect a film title that tells you exactly what to expect. Think Snakes on a Plane. Or Clown in a Cornfield. That’s the pretty self-explanatory title of this mostly fun new killer clown movie from director Eli Craig, best known for his cult favourite 2010 horror comedy Tucker &… Read More Movie Review: Clown in a Cornfield
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto If you didn’t know that Excel spreadsheets were a thing you could be the best at, well, have I got news for you. There’s a whole competition for it, where students come from around the world to… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Spreadsheet Champions
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival ran from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto In their aptly titled documentary They’re Here, co-directors Daniel Claridge and Pacho Velez introduce us to a group of UFO enthusiasts from upstate New York. They all claim to have their own experiences with sightings or encounters,… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: They’re Here
By John Corrado The 2025 edition of Hot Docs has just come to a close, and the winners of the festival’s Audience Awards have just been announced. Coming in first for the Hot Docs Audience Award is Ryan White’s incredibly moving Come See Me in the Good Light, which was also my personal favourite of… Read More #HotDocs25 Audience Award Winners
By John Corrado The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto When standup comedian Tig Notaro, one of the producers of Come See Me in the Good Light, faced her own cancer diagnosis, she announced it to the world by opening a show with the line “good evening,… Read More #HotDocs25 Review: Come See Me in the Good Light
The Joy of Movies 