By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The new English-language short film from writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way of Life is an enjoyable queer Western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal that serves as the Spanish filmmaker’s “answer” to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which he was offered to direct but declined. The short, which premiered… Read More Review: Strange Way of Life
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 7th to 17th. Tarsem Singh Dhandwar returns with Dear Jassi (which was awarded the Platform prize at TIFF), a stylistically mature romantic heartbreaker rooted in tragic fact that is both the Indian-born director’s first film set in India, and his most… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Dear Jassi (Platform)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest film from Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, following his Oscar-winning Drive My Car, Evil Does Not Exist is a very interesting cinematic experience that mixes elements… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Evil Does Not Exist (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In his twentieth feature Fallen Leaves, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki crafts a gently humorous and very heartfelt film that has the feel of a classic screen… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Fallen Leaves (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest from Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (following last year’s Korea-set Broker), Monster is a simmering drama about childhood and bullying that holds us in its… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Monster (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. An older man wakes up in the morning and gets ready for work. He tenderly mists his houseplants before leaving his modest home, and listens… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Perfect Days (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Did the husband fall, or was he pushed? That’s the question at the centre of Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, an absorbing courtroom… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Anatomy of a Fall (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Spanish-French thriller The Beasts (As Bestas), which premiered at Cannes last year, follows a French couple living in the Galician countryside who end up clashing up against the locals. Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and his wife Olga (Marina Foïs) are older expatriates from France who have set up… Read More Review: The Beasts
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The Spanish coming of age drama 20,000 Species of Bees, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is… Read More #InsideOut2023 Review: 20,000 Species of Bees
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 director Juha Suonpää’s documentary Lynx Man, we are introduced to a unique subject; Hannu, an older Finnish man who has appointed himself… Read More #HotDocs23 Review: Lynx Man
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) EO, the Oscar-nominated latest film from 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, is an engaging portrait of a donkey travelling around Poland, seen mostly through the animal’s eyes. Styled as a modern cinematic counterpart to Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic Au Hasard Balthazar, the film opens with a show donkey… Read More Review: EO
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Director Edward Berger’s Oscar-nominated All Quiet on the Western Front is a new adaptation of German novelist Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I classic, which was most famously turned into an Oscar-winning 1930 film. Whether you categorize it as a remake of that previous Best Picture winner or… Read More Review: All Quiet on the Western Front
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The Oscar-nominated (and Golden Globe-winning) International Feature Argentina, 1985 is a compelling historical drama detailing the lengthy legal process that took place in Argentina in the 1980s to hold members of the country’s former military dictatorship to account for their brutal treatment of political dissidents. The film is… Read More Review: Argentina, 1985
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The first film in the Irish language to be nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars, The Quiet Girl is a tender and poignant coming of age film that shows a painfully shy young girl finally blossoming in the right care, and it’s a thing of quiet… Read More Review: The Quiet Girl
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Being made to feel self-conscious about who are as a child is a hell of a thing. Belgian director Lukas Dhont powerfully explores this feeling in his Oscar-nominated coming of age drama Close, which tells the story of Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav de Waele), two 13-year-old… Read More Review: Close
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Slow, a very good drama from Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze, begins with what feels like it could be a classic meet-cute. Elena (Greta Grineviciute) is a contemporary dancer hopping between sexual partners, and Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) is a sign language interpreter. They meet when she is teaching a… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: Slow
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The directorial debut of Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (The Broken Circle Breakdown), When It Melts is an adaptation of author Lize Spit’s book Het Smelt that explores childhood trauma through the eyes of a young woman finally confronting her past. Beatens takes an unflinching and provocative approach to… Read More #Sundance2023 Review: When It Melts
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Alice Diop, Saint Omer (France’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature) is an extremely understated and slow-moving legal drama that unfolds almost entirely within a French courtroom. The film centres around Rama (Kayije Kagame), a professor and novelist who travels… Read More Review: Saint Omer
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The latest film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bardo (full title Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) finds the Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker in introspective mode and working in the Spanish language for the first time since Biutiful in 2010, to craft a semi-autobiographical tale of identity and belonging,… Read More Review: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
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