By John Corrado Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the lead character in British writer-director Mike Leigh’s new movie Hard Truths, is a bitter woman with a chip perpetually on her shoulder. She is miserable every time she steps out into the world, but not much happier at home either, where she is constantly nagging after husband… Read More Movie Review: Hard Truths
By John Corrado Flight Risk is the new movie directed by Mel Gibson. It’s the actor-turned-filmmaker’s first since the World War II drama Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, which provided a stunning Hollywood comeback for him when he received a Best Director Oscar nomination. Gibson’s latest is also his most constrained and straight-forward directorial effort yet;… Read More Movie Review: Flight Risk
By John Corrado The first English-language feature from Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door is an involving and morally complex – if occasionally uneven – melodrama, built around a pair of compelling performances from Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The film (which was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice) opens with Moore’s Ingrid,… Read More Movie Review: The Room Next Door
By John Corrado It’s rare to come across a film that feels like it is reinventing the form. Yet, in bringing Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys to the screen, director RaMell Ross takes a radically new approach to adapting a novel; he presents the entire film from the perspective of his characters, through unique,… Read More Movie Review: Nickel Boys
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of The Wild Robot. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my TIFF review right here. Last month, DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot was released on 4K Ultra HD. Adapted from Peter Brown’s book, the… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: The Wild Robot (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado The British inventor and his pantomime dog return in Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the second feature-length outing for the characters following 2005’s Oscar-winning The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Co-directed by series creator Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham, this charming and funny new adventure for the stop-motion man and dog… Read More Movie Review: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix)
By John Corrado Director Maura Delpero’s Vermgilio, Italy’s International Feature submission for the Oscars, is set at the end of World War II in 1944, but the war is happening entirely offscreen. Instead, this is a slow-burn slice-of-life portrait of a large family in the mountain village of Vermiglio. The patriarch of the family is Cesare… Read More Movie Review: Vermiglio
By John Corrado Director James Mangold arguably perfected the modern biopic structure with Walk the Line, his Oscar-winning 2005 portrait of country singer Johnny Cash. Mangold now returns to this genre and time period with his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (in fact, Cash is even featured here as well, as a contemporary of Dylan’s). Dylan, one… Read More Movie Review: A Complete Unknown
By John Corrado Wicked is the long-in-development film adaptation of the Broadway musical from over two decades ago, with director Jon M. Chu (In the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians) finally bringing this Wizard of Oz prequel story to the screen. Well, Act One of it anyways; the film is a two-parter, with Act Two (officially… Read More Movie Review: Wicked
By John Corrado Nosferatu is the fourth film from director Robert Eggers, and it finds him reimagining F.W. Murnau’s German Expressionist film of the same name from 1922. This passion project from Eggers has shades of his 2015 debut The Witch, but on a much larger scale. Whether you view this as a remake of the Murnau… Read More Movie Review: Nosferatu
By John Corrado Writer-director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl is a compelling modern twist on the erotic thriller, that centres around a woman with power who gets turned on by giving it up, as she embarks on an inappropriate workplace relationship with a male intern. These fascinating power dynamics are portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson,… Read More Movie Review: Babygirl
By John Corrado Red One, directed by Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jumanji: The Next Level), is a not as bad as it could have been but still thoroughly mediocre film that takes the Santa Claus story and turns it into a bloated, big budget action fantasy. The movie (which played in theatres for a… Read More Movie Review: Red One (Prime Video)
By John Corrado The third film in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, adapted from the SEGA video games, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 finds director Jeff Fowler delivering another hybrid of live action and animation that feels very consistent with the first two. In other words, it’s fun. Sure, these aren’t cinematic masterpieces by any stretch.… Read More Movie Review: Sonic the Hedgehog 3
By John Corrado The most surprising thing about Mufasa: The Lion King, which serves as both a prequel and sequel to Disney’s 2019 “live action” remake of their 1994 animated classic The Lion King, is that it’s directed by Barry Jenkins. Jenkins is best known for the Oscar-winning dramas Moonlight and If Beale Street Could… Read More Movie Review: Mufasa: The Lion King
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Joker: Folie à Deux. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my theatrical review right here. Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to his 2019 box office smash Joker, is now arriving on… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Joker: Folie à Deux
By John Corrado At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, a group of Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village and kidnapped Israeli athletes, holding them hostage in a tense standoff. Director Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a movie about this hostage crisis, but somewhat indirectly; the film is based on the true story of the ABC… Read More Movie Review: September 5
By John Corrado Elton John: Never Too Late, the new music documentary that premiered at TIFF and is now being released on Disney Plus, follows the British rockstar on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. Co-directed by R.J. Cutler and David Furnish, the film counts down to his final concert in North America at Dodger… Read More Movie Review: Elton John: Never Too Late (Disney+)
By John Corrado If you could radically change your appearance, would you? That’s the question at the centre of writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, a fascinating mix of piercing character study and absurdist, Charlie Kaufman-esque tragicomedy. Schimberg’s film is a sort of modern riff on Flowers for Algernon, the classic book in which a man with… Read More Movie Review: A Different Man
By John Corrado Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s highly disturbing but artfully crafted new film The Girl with the Needle is a period piece set in Copenhagen in the direct aftermath of World War I. The timeline is set early on when a town crier shouts out news of the armistice, right after we see… Read More Movie Review: The Girl with the Needle
By John Corrado Beatles ‘64, the new Disney Plus documentary from director David Tedeschi and producer Martin Scorsese about the Fab Four’s first visit to America, opens with footage of President John F. Kennedy. These scenes set the film up as a sort of broader time capsule of this specific era, but it also ties… Read More Movie Review: Beatles ’64 (Disney+)
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