By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Director Daniel Goldhaber’s provocatively titled second feature How to Blow Up a Pipeline – which has garnered a lot of buzz since it premiered at TIFF last year, and also (unsurprisingly) stirred up controversy – is a tautly paced thriller following a group of eco-terrorists plotting to blow up… Read More Review: How to Blow Up a Pipeline
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The third instalment in the Magic Mike saga, which began with Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 film that first introduced us to Channing Tatum’s titular male stripper, Magic Mike’s Last Dance is an example of a third film that is easily the weakest in the series, yet still mildly entertaining… Read More Blu-ray Review: Magic Mike’s Last Dance
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The eighth feature from American indie auteur Kelly Reichardt, Showing Up is recognizably a part of her impressive oeuvre of slice-of-life films about ordinary people going about their lives in Oregon, while also adding some levity to it. The film stars Michelle Williams as Lizzy, a struggling sculptor… Read More Review: Showing Up
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The feature directorial debut of Toronto filmmaker Joseph Amenta, Soft is a gritty and atmospheric coming-of-age film. It follows Julien (Matteus Lunot), Otis (Harlow Joy) and Tony (Zion Matheson), three adolescent kids in the city who are hanging out together over summer break. The kids, who are all… Read More Review: Soft
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. Set in a vague, post-apocalyptic world that has turned much of the population into depressive zombies, Wintertide follows Beth (Niamh Carolan),… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Wintertide
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. A routine traffic stop leads to an increasingly obsessive quest to get the ticket thrown out in court in writer-director Adrian… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Retrograde
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Writer-director A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature A Thousand and One, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January, is a mother-son drama defined by its complex lead character, with the filmmaker eschewing easy emotion for something far thornier. The film, which begins in the 1990s, centres around… Read More Review: A Thousand and One
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a movie based on the classic fantasy roleplaying game, and it offers a surprisingly enjoyable mix of comedy and adventure that has a fun, playing with a group of friends feel to it that I imagine will be quite appealing to… Read More Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah), the two protagonists of British filmmaker Raine Allen-Miller’s directorial debut Rye Lane, have their initial meet-cute through the dividing walls in the unisex bathroom of a South London art gallery. Dom is crying in one of the stalls after a bad… Read More Review: Rye Lane (Disney+)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. In How to Get My Parents to Divorce, a family movie from Quebec that plays like a clever inversion of The… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: How to Get My Parents to Divorce
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. The debut film from writer-director Connie Cocchia, When Time Got Louder is a Canadian family drama that explores how a tight-knit… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: When Time Got Louder
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Blue’s Big City Adventure is a new feature-length Blue’s Clues movie from Nickelodeon that branches off from the 2019 reboot series Blues Clues & You, and mainly exists to have new host Josh (Josh Dela Cruz) meet up with the show’s old hosts Steve (Steve Burns) and Joe… Read More DVD Review: Blue’s Big City Adventure
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2023 Canadian Film Fest runs from March 28th to April 1st, with films screening in-person at Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto and virtually on Super Channel Fuse. An absurdist comedy about gender politics that segues into being a psychosexual suburban fantasy, the Quebec film Babysitter is an entertaining… Read More Canadian Film Fest Review: Babysitter
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Keanu Reeves returns to the titular role of John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 4, which doubles as the best entry yet in this already very good action movie franchise. This fourth instalment puts Reeves’ former assassin Wick, who is now a marked man, at the centre of… Read More Review: John Wick: Chapter 4
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Babylon. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. Damien Chazelle’s Old Hollywood epic Babylon is being released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray this week, including in a limited… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Babylon (SteelBook Edition)
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of A Man Called Otto. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. A Man Called Otto, director Marc Forster’s very enjoyable remake of the 2015 Swedish film A Man Called Ove, is… Read More Blu-ray Review: A Man Called Otto
John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Brother, the Scarborough-set drama from writer-director Clement Virgo that is up for fourteen Canadian Screen Awards, follows two brothers, Francis (Aaron Pierre) and Michael (Lamar Johnson), over the course of more than a decade. Much of the film takes place in the 1990s, with the Jamaican-Canadian brothers living in… Read More Review: Brother
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Set in Toronto’s Tibetan community, Tenzin is a Canadian social issue drama that takes a moody, minimalistic approach to telling a story and exploring its themes. Directed by Michael LeBlanc and Josh Reichmann, the film centres around Tenzin (Tenzin Kelsang), a young Tibetan man dealing with the grief… Read More Review: Tenzin
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Written and directed by Matt Ruskin, Boston Strangler is a pretty good direct-to-streaming serial killer thriller that dramatizes the events around the real life Boston Strangler murders, seen from the perspective of Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley), one of the female journalists who helped break the story in 1962.… Read More Review: Boston Strangler (Disney+)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The solo debut of Chris Williams (who co-directed Bolt, Big Hero 6 and Moana for Disney), the Oscar-nominated The Sea Beast is a pretty good animated adventure movie from Netflix that imagines a world where pirates sail the high seas, killing sea monsters at the behest of the… Read More Review: The Sea Beast
The Joy of Movies 