By John Corrado In the hands of Nathan Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim, a nearly three-hour documentary about Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes becomes one of the most compelling films of the year. This is You Can See Everything, a highly adventurous gambit from A24 that finds Fielder embedding himself in the home… Read More Movie Review: You Can See Everything
By John Corrado Sometimes a basic premise is all you need to sell a movie. Such is the case with Whalefall, which follows a young diver who gets swallowed by a whale, and has to survive inside of the creature as his oxygen runs out. But it’s what director Brian Duffield (No One Will Save… Read More Movie Review: Whalefall
By John Corrado Before David Fincher’s The Social Network was released in 2010, there was a lot of talk about whether or not we actually needed a movie about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. It turned out to not only be one of the most prescient films of that decade, but one of the… Read More Movie Review: The Social Reckoning
By John Corrado Apple Original Films has just put out the official trailer for Being Heumann, director Siân Heder’s follow-up to her surprise Best Picture winner CODA. I saw this one when it premiered as the opening night film at TIFF last month (you can read my full review right here), and enjoyed it quite… Read More Official Trailer for Siân Heder’s Being Heumann
By John Corrado In his entertaining directorial debut California Schemin’, actor James McAvoy takes on the wild story of early-2000s rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, whose flash in the pan success was built on a lie. Silibil and Brains were the stage names of Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley) and Gavin Bain (Séamus McLean Ross), two… Read More Movie Review: California Schemin’
By John Corrado Digger, the latest film from Birdman and The Revenant filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, stars Tom Cruise in the titular role of Digger Rockwell, an aging Texas oil tycoon. Cruise, appearing in old man makeup, has been the main selling point of Iñárritu’s film. Returning to non-action roles, Digger gives the actor the… Read More Movie Review: Digger
By John Corrado Director Michael Showalter’s Verity, the latest adaptation of a novel by It Ends With Us and Regretting You author Colleen Hoover, is a throwback to the psychological thrillers of the 1990s and 2000s, that themselves were inspired by the films of Brian De Palma who borrowed liberally from Alfred Hitchcock. This leaves… Read More Movie Review: Verity
By John Corrado Focus Features has just put out the first official trailer for Elsinore, fresh off the film winning the International People’s Choice Award at TIFF. Andrew Scott stars in the film as Chariots of Fire actor Ian Charleson, with the film focusing on his performance in a production of Hamlet while he was… Read More Official Trailer for Elsinore, starring Andrew Scott
By John Corrado Perhaps the funniest thing about director John Wilson’s The History of Concrete, the comedian and documentarian’s endearingly offbeat feature debut, is that we actually do learn a lot about concrete by watching the film. Playing in a similar vein to his HBO series How To with John Wilson, Wilson’s film is a… Read More Movie Review: The History of Concrete
By John Corrado In director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, which won the Directing Award at Sundance earlier this year, Rinko Kikuchi stars as Haru, a Japanese woman who loves ballroom dancing. Haru lives in Tokyo, and performs in ballroom dance competitions with her husband Luis (Alejandro Edda). Then Luis dies suddenly, and… Read More Movie Review: Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
By John Corrado Sometimes all you need for a movie to work is an old school movie star and a canine companion. Such is the case with Heart of the Beast, the latest film from director David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch), which stars Brad Pitt as a Special Forces officer and his combat dog.… Read More Movie Review: Heart of the Beast
By John Corrado It’s the mid-2000s, right in the middle of the reality TV boom, and Chris Hansen is using his NBC show To Catch a Predator to turn sting operations capturing pedophiles into entertainment. This is the premise behind Primetime, director Lance Oppenheim’s quasi-biopic of Hansen turned stylish, disturbing Nightcrawler-esque thriller. Robert Pattinson stars… Read More Movie Review: Primetime
By John Corrado In his latest film, Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been, Canadian documentary filmmaker Barry Avrich puts the spotlight on singer Darlene Love. The film won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at TIFF (the second year in a row for Avrich, following his The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue last year),… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado Director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code, Warcraft) brings the British comic book series from 2000 AD to the big screen in his adult animated sci-fi film Rogue Trooper, which has the look and feel of a video game. Whether or not you find that to be a positive attribute will impact your… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Rogue Trooper (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The latest film from Canadian director Michael Dowse (Goon, The F Word, Fubar), The Stunt Driver is a period biopic of Ken Carter, the eccentric Québécois stunt driver who planned to jump a rocket car over the St. Lawrence River in the 1970s. Jay Baruchel stars in the film as Carter, aka… Read More #TIFF26 Review: The Stunt Driver (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Everest: The Other Side is the latest thrill-seeking documentary from filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the team behind the Oscar-winning mountain climbing film Free Solo. Their latest is a surprisingly harrowing portrait of mountaineer Jim Morrison’s unstoppable journey to ski down the North Face of Mount Everest. While many have… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Everest: The Other Side (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Chris Rock delivers his first directorial effort in over a decade (since 2014’s Top Five), with the uneven but fairly entertaining Hollywood satire Misty Green. Rosalind Eleazar is the best thing about Rock’s latest as writer and director, starring in the film as the titular Misty Green. Misty is a washed up… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Misty Green (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The main takeaway from Half, the sophomore film from director Samjad P S, is that Indian vampire action cinema kinda kicks ass. Samjad’s film basically plays like a Bollywood mash-up of The Raid and Mad Max, following twin vampires out for blood and revenge in India. Ethan (Ranjith Sajeev) and Ivy (Aiswarya… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Half (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado La Bola Negra, the new film from co-directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi known collectively as Los Javis, is an ambitious multi-character drama mixing elements of war movie, love story, and portrait of the persecution faced by gay men throughout Spanish history. It’s a sweeping film, that comes together beautifully by the… Read More #TIFF26 Review: La Bola Negra (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Terry Fox, the young man who had his leg amputated due to cancer and began running across the country in 1980 to spread awareness of the disease and raise money for a cure, remains one of the most celebrated Canadians of all time. In his remarkable new documentary Run Terry Run, director… Read More #TIFF26 Review: Run Terry Run (Gala Presentations)
