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 phrase “Dumb Money” comes from how Wall Street fat cats refer to the money they make off poor investments by average folks who lose… Read More #TIFF23 Review: Dumb Money (Gala 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. The debut feature from Toronto-born director M. H. Murray, I Don’t Know Who You Are is an anxiety-inducing drama that primarily takes place in the… Read More #TIFF23 Review: I Don’t Know Who You Are (Discovery)
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 Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Asteroid City. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The latest feature from writer-director Wes Anderson – and one of the best movies of the year, so far – Asteroid City… Read More Blu-ray Review: Asteroid City
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The title of Dreamin’ Wild, the new music drama from writer-director Bill Pohlad, comes from the name of an album first recorded by teenage brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson on their rural Washington farm in the late 1970s. The album flew under the radar, before finding unexpected success… Read More Review: Dreamin’ Wild
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Ben Kingsley stars in the film Jules as Milton Robinson, an aging eccentric who befriends an alien that crash lands in his backyard, and invites the humanoid creature into his home out of loneliness and isolation. This results in an odd but mostly weirdly endearing little film that… Read More Review: Jules
By John Corrado In honour of the film’s milestone 70th anniversary this year, Paramount has given a 4K Ultra HD upgrade to filmmaker William Wyler’s 1951 classic Roman Holiday, starring the incomparable pair of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Shot on location in Rome, Wyler’s film captures the vibrancy of a post-war Italy, built around… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Roman Holiday: 70th Anniversary
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) Fast X is the tenth entry in the Fast and Furious saga (the eleventh if you count the spin-off film Hobbs & Shaw), and at this point the series has fully embraced its status as offering little more than brainless entertainment fuelled by fast cars and hot stars.… Read More Blu-ray Review: Fast X (Collector’s Edition)
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 latest from American indie film director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange, Little Men), which premiered at Sundance and was the opening night film at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival in Toronto, Passages charts the sexually charged and emotionally messy dynamics between three people in modern Paris. The… Read More Review: Passages
By John Corrado In 1986, John Hughes released Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, introducing us to Matthew Broderick’s titular high schooler who plays hooky to spend the day in Chicago with his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara). Already a staple on home entertainment across various formats, Paramount has now upgraded the… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the latest big screen outing for the adolescent mutant turtles trained in ninjutsu who eat pizza and live in the sewers of New York City, and it serves as a rock solid reboot of sorts for the franchise. Directed by Jeff Rowe… Read More Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Canadian drama North of Normal is an adaptation of Cea Sunrise Person’s 2014 memoir of the same name, following her coming of age in the city after an unconventional upbringing in the Yukon wilderness with her free-loving teen mother (played in the film by Sarah Gadon). The… Read More Review: North of Normal
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Disney’s Haunted Mansion is the latest movie based on one of their theme park rides, while also serving as a reboot of their maligned 2003 film The Haunted Mansion. Directed by Justin Simien (Dear White People, Bad Hair), this is a slightly more “serious” take on the material… Read More Review: Haunted Mansion
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The Book Club ladies are back in Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the 2018 film that finds elderly best friends Diane (Diane Keaton), Vivian (Jane Fonda), Sharon (Candice Bergen) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) – who first bonded over reading Fifty Shades of Grey – taking a… Read More Blu-ray Review: Book Club: The Next Chapter (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) “Now I become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Taken from Sanskrit, these were the famous words spoken by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer following the test of his atomic bomb in the Los Alamos desert, an invention that would be used to take countless lives when it was… Read More Review: Oppenheimer
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) With her blonde hair and iconic figure, Barbie is one of the most recognizable toys of all time. Whether you view Mattel’s flagship doll as a beloved plaything or an impossible standard by which to judge female beauty standards, there’s little denying the impact that she has had… Read More Review: Barbie
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) A group of women from Ireland take a pilgrimage to Lourdes in The Miracle Club, an Irish film that takes a talented cast fronted by two Oscar winners (Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith) and two Oscar nominees (Laura Linney and Stephen Rea), but struggles to live up to… Read More Review: The Miracle Club
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Following the release of Ghost Protocol in 2011, the Mission: Impossible series has turned into one of our best and most reliable action movie franchises, building on the promise of sequels that either match or exceed their predecessors. That trend continues with the seventh film in the series,… Read More Review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
The Joy of Movies 