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+)
By John Corrado The third entry in Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy depicting the interior lives of famous women (following the one-two punch of Jackie and Spencer), Maria is the Chilean filmmaker’s portrait of the Italian opera singer Maria Callas. Larraín aims to do for Callas what he did for Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Diana in his previous films, which boasted… Read More Movie Review: Maria
By John Corrado Disney’s Moana became a box office hit when it was released eight years ago in 2016. The film has enjoyed a strong shelf life with audiences since then, so it was inevitable that, for better or for worse, the studio would want to do more with these characters. Enter Moana 2, which began life as… Read More Movie Review: Moana 2
By John Corrado Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, the filmmaker’s Oscar-winning modern classic from 2000, is remembered for many things, including star Russell Crowe throwing his arms open in the arena and asking the immortal question, “are you not entertained?” It’s a moment that has become somewhat of a meme, but it’s impossible not to think about… Read More Movie Review: Gladiator II
By John Corrado Payal Kapadia, the filmmaker behind the 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, makes her narrative feature debut with All We Imagine as Light. Kapadia’s film, which was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes earlier this year, is a touching and very heartfelt slice-of-life portrait of women in modern India. The film mainly focuses… Read More Movie Review: All We Imagine as Light
By John Corrado Michael Keaton returns to one of his most iconic roles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a legacy sequel that finds director Tim Burton going back to the world of his 1988 film. The result is the filmmaker’s freest and most spirited work in some time, with a refreshing sense of playfulness and creativity to it.… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
By John Corrado In 2009, director Adam Elliot, the Australian animator behind the 2003 Oscar-winning short film Harvie Krumpet, released his debut feature Mary & Max. The excellent claymation film had a lovingly hand-crafted feel to it, and told the tender story of the pen-pal friendship between a girl and an autistic man, which Elliot explored with… Read More Movie Review: Memoir of a Snail
By John Corrado In A Real Pain, his sophomore feature as writer and director, actor Jesse Eisenberg crafts a sensitive, richly textured character study of two cousins reuniting for a Holocaust tour in Poland. This unlikely premise paves the way for a dramedy that takes the bones of a mismatched buddy comedy, as Eisenberg graciously shares… Read More Movie Review: A Real Pain
By John Corrado The latest “event movie” from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan, Trap is basically pitched as a thriller set at a pop concert with a serial killer trying to escape the auditorium, and it delivers on this conceit. Josh Hartnett stars in the film as Cooper Abbott, a working class dad taking his daughter… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Trap
By John Corrado Adapted from the 1972 children’s novel by Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever tells the story of a town’s Christmas pageant that gets upended when the local outcast kids audition for roles. In the hands of director Dallas Jenkins (creator of the Bible-based TV series The Chosen), Robinson’s book is turned into a charming… Read More Movie Review: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
By John Corrado Thirty years after Forrest Gump, director Robert Zemeckis reunites with stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as well as screenwriter Eric Roth for the ambitious drama Here. An adaptation of the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here is built around the conceit of watching life unfold in a single location across millions of years, from… Read More Movie Review: Here
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