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. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer finds the filmmaker interpreting the work of author William S. Burroughs. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Burroughs, which follows its… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Queer (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. Fabian Stumm is the writer, director and star of Sad Jokes, and he uses his impeccably dry comedic voice to craft a German dramedy that uses long takes to… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sad Jokes (Discovery)
By John Corrado The group GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics has announced the winners of their 16th annual TV awards. Leading the pack is Hacks with four wins including Best TV Comedy, followed by Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, which racked up three wins including Best TV Drama. In third place is… Read More Winners of the 2024 Dorian TV Awards from GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics
By John Corrado The feature debut of music video director Luke Gilford, National Anthem is an engaging portrait of outcasts who desperately want their part of the American Dream, but have to carve out their own piece of it. Entrenched in the world of cowboys and rodeos, Gilford’s film is steeped in Americana, but explored… Read More Movie Review: National Anthem
By John Corrado The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The documentary A Mother Apart (which was one of the finalists for the Hot Docs Audience Award) offers a candid portrait of Staceyann… Read More #InsideOut2024 Review: A Mother Apart
By John Corrado The 2024 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 24th to June 1st at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In honour of her 18th birthday, Elliot (Maisy Stella) decides to do shrooms in the woods with her best friends Ruthie (Maddie… Read More #InsideOut2024 Review: My Old Ass
By John Corrado Hailey (Em Haine) returns home to the Nova Scotia coast years after walking out on her family in the Canadian dramedy Hailey Rose, which shines a light on a quirky but complicated family. Hailey drolly narrates this complicated family history over a series of flashbacks in the film’s opening sequence. She tells… Read More Movie Review: Hailey Rose
By John Corrado Today, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (of which I am a member) has announced the winners of their 15th annual Dorian Film Awards, voted on by the critics group’s over five hundred members. Andrew Haigh’s excellent queer drama All of Us Strangers took home the top awards for Film of… Read More Winners for the 15th Dorian Film Awards from GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics
By John Corrado Today, critics group GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (of which I am a member) announced the nominations for their 15th annual Dorian Film Awards, voted on by the group’s over five hundred members. Leading the pack is Andrew Haigh’s tender queer drama All of Us Strangers with a total nine… Read More Nominations for the 15th Dorian Film Awards from GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest work from writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose 2011 breakout film Weekend remains an essential piece of queer cinema, All of Us Strangers is a tender, dreamlike meditation on grief and loneliness. Working from the 1987 Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, Haigh’s film is a ghost story… Read More Review: All of Us Strangers
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following his 2018 directorial debut A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper now turns his attention to the life of New York composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the biopic Maestro, casting himself in the leading role. The film spans decades in the life of Bernstein from the 1940s… Read More Review: Maestro
By John Corrado The new eight episode limited series Fellow Travelers (based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name) is a McCarthy-era period drama that is set against the fascinating political backdrop of the mid-20th century. But the handsomely mounted Showtime mini-series, which comes to us from screenwriter and executive producer Ron Nyswaner… Read More TV Review: Fellow Travelers
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Persian Version, which premiered at Sundance in January, finds writer-director Maryam Keshavarz (Circumstance) dipping into her own background as an Iranian-American woman to craft an enjoyable, ambitious mother-daughter dramedy. The film centres around Leila (Layla Mohammadi), an Iranian-American aspiring filmmaker living in New York City. She has… Read More Review: The Persian Version
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) Solo, which recently won the Best Canadian Film prize at TIFF, is a character drama set in Montreal’s drag scene. In her third feature, Quebec writer-director Sophie Dupuis (Family First, Underground) captivatingly explores the dynamics between the performers at a Montreal gay bar. The film centres around the… Read More Review: Solo
By John Corrado ★★★ (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 director George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Rustin is a solid Netflix biopic of gay civil right’s leader Bayard Rustin, that… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Rustin (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. Directed with an intimate, improvisational style by British filmmaker Dominic Savage, Close to You is a remarkably tender family drama that stars Elliot Page as Sam,… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Close to You (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (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 her second feature Fitting In, Canadian writer-director Molly McGlynn (Mary Goes Round) shows how to handle sensitive subject matter in an often humorous but still… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Fitting In (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. Expanded from an underground musical comedy act that co-writers Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp used to perform together in New York, Dicks: The Musical finds Borat… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Dicks: The Musical (Midnight Madness)
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 title of Backspot refers to the position Riley (Devery Jacobs) holds on her high school cheerleading team. She treats cheerleading like an extreme sport,… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Backspot (Discovery)
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