By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Door Mouse, a Canadian mystery involving missing girls and dirty nightclubs, is a pretty good little homegrown neo-noir exercise done on a budget that serves as the feature directorial debut of Canadian actor Avan Jogia. The film is named for Mouse (Hayley Law), who works by night dancing… Read More Review: Door Mouse
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Adult Adoption is the Toronto-set feature directorial debut of Karen Knox, best known as the creator of the CBC Gem series Homeschooled. The film is written by Canadian actress and playwright Ellie Moon, who also stars in it as Rosy, a 25-year-old woman living in Toronto who has… Read More Review: Adult Adoption
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Damien Chazelle’s Babylon feels like the movie you make after narrowly losing the Best Picture Oscar for La La Land; a go-for-broke epic about the early days of Hollywood that suggests you love the movie industry as much as you might hate it. Because as much as Chazelle’s… Read More Review: Babylon
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Halloween Ends. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review right here. The third film in director David Gordon Green’s modern Halloween trilogy that began in 2018, Halloween Ends is now arriving on Blu-ray… Read More Blu-ray Review: Halloween Ends (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) A fictionalized biopic of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (played by Vicky Krieps), Corsage is the sort of reimagined period piece that takes some artistic liberties to offer a more modern portrait of a dissatisfied monarch. Set in 1877 and 1878, around Elisabeth’s 40th birthday, the film charts her… Read More Review: Corsage
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Tom Hanks stars in A Man Called Otto as Otto Anderson, an old grouch who we first meet buying a hook and exactly five feet of rope from a hardware store. An English-language remake of the 2015 Swedish film A Man Called Ove, which was itself based on… Read More Review: A Man Called Otto
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) Black Adam, the latest film in the soon-to-be retooled DC cinematic universe, is the epitome of mediocrity in the already overcrowded superhero genre. No, this big scale action flick directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson is not completely unwatchable. But it is entirely mindless and… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Black Adam
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) How long can you keep running from death before it catches up to you? That’s the surprisingly deep question being asked at the centre of DreamWorks Animation’s almost shockingly good sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. As a followup to 2011’s Puss in Boots, which was itself… Read More Review: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the Blu-ray release of Bros. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original review from TIFF right here. Following its world premiere at TIFF and release in theatres at the end of September, the Judd Apatow-produced rom-com Bros is… Read More Blu-ray Review: Bros (Collector’s Edition)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) It’s been thirteen years since director James Cameron first took us to Pandora in his 2009 sci-fi blockbuster Avatar, a film that some have erroneously claimed had no cultural impact, but won a trio of Oscars, lit the box office on fire, and ushered in a new 3D… Read More Review: Avatar: The Way of Water
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The surprise box office hit Smile is an original horror movie from writer-director Parker Finn, that mixes the paranoia of It Follows, with the ticking time bomb once-you-see-it-you-die conceit of The Ring, and the dysfunctional family drama mixed with supernatural horror of Hereditary. Despite these obvious influences, Finn’s… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Smile
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Based on the classic 1960s picture books by Bernard Waber, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a modestly enjoyable live action musical featuring original songs by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul that follows the adventures of a singing crocodile in New York City. The title character, Lyle (voiced by Shawn… Read More Blu-ray Review: Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) A group of rich young adults in their twenties gather for a weekend getaway during a hurricane in the A24-backed Bodies Bodies Bodies, a vapid mix of indie party comedy and murder mystery that often feels more like a spoof of an A24 movie. At the start of… Read More Blu-ray Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (official title) is a passion project for the Mexican filmmaker, who crafts an emotional stop-motion retelling of author Carlo Collodi’s classic book. The story of the wooden boy brought to life has been adapted for the screen countless times, perhaps most famously in Disney’s… Read More Review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Leave it to Noah Baumbach to follow up his stunning 2019 drama Marriage Story with White Noise, an apocalyptic dark comedy about the existential fear of dying that still feels distinctly like a part of his filmography. Baumbach’s latest finds the writer-director tackling Don DeLillo’s “unfilmable” 1985 post-modernist… Read More Review: White Noise
By John Corrado Please note that this is a review of the 4K Ultra HD release of Don’t Worry Darling. For my full thoughts on the film itself, you can read my original theatrical review right here. After releasing in theatres in September, Olivia Wilde’s much buzzed about second directorial effort Don’t Worry Darling is… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Don’t Worry Darling
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Based on Michael Ausiello’s autobiographical book Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies, the point of the movie Spoiler Alert (and the book that preceded it) is to tell a sweeping love story where we already know the tragic outcome. The film succeeds at this with mostly satisfying but somewhat… Read More Review: Spoiler Alert
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is a love story between Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet), two lonely young cannibals who are both on the run from family problems and their own desires, when they meet on a road trip through the Midwest in the 1980s. After… Read More Review: Bones and All
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Strange World, the latest feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a throwback to old school adventure movies from the 1930s to 1950s that works as a somewhat slight but mostly entertaining animated film. The film centres around the Clades, who are a legendary family of explorers. The… Read More Review: Strange World
By John Corrado In honour of its 35th anniversary this year, the 1987 John Hughes classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles is making its 4K Ultra HD debut this week from Paramount, just in time for American Thanksgiving. The film, of course, stars Steve Martin as Neal Page and John Candy as Del Griffith, two men… Read More 4K Ultra HD Review: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Joy of Movies 