By John Corrado In her heartwarming and heartfelt dramedy Rental Family, director Hikari explores the Japanese industry of “rental families;” actors that can be hired to play the roles of family members and friends for lonely people. It’s a concept perhaps foreign to Western audiences, but one that, in her film at least, is an… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Rental Family (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Searchlight Pictures has just given us our first look at Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, the director and actor’s follow up to Meastro and A Star is Born. Cooper’s latest is a character dramedy starring Will Arnett as a guy going through a divorce (Laura Dern plays ex-wife), who turns to… Read More Teaser Trailer for Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?
By John Corrado Searchlight Pictures has revealed our first look at Rental Family, which is shaping up to be one of the hottest titles of the fall. Brendan Fraser, fresh off his Oscar win for The Whale, stars in the film as a washed up American actor living in Japan, who gets hired by a… Read More First Trailer for Rental Family, starring Brendan Fraser
By John Corrado The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards have just been announced. Leading the pack is the audacious musical Emilia Pérez with thirteen nominations, a huge win for Netflix. It’s followed closely by The Brutalist and Wicked with ten nominations apiece. The Best Picture lineup is rounded out by Anora, The Brutalist, A… Read More Nominations for the 97th Academy Awards
By John Corrado It’s the final day of 2024, which means that another year has come to an end. The preambles to these lists are always hard to write, so I’m going to keep this one short. I saw a lot of movies in 2024, and liked quite a few of them. It’s been assessed… Read More The Best Movies of 2024
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 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 Searchlight Pictures has just released the full “official trailer” for A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold’s (Walk the Line) upcoming biopic of Bob Dylan starring Timothée Chalamet. The film charts his rise from folk singer in New York’s Greenwich Village to infamously “going electric,” as we see a bit in this trailer… Read More Full Trailer Released for A Complete Unknown
By John Corrado In a surprise move, Searchlight Pictures has just released the first trailer for their upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as the iconic folk singer. The studio has also dated the film (which recently wrapped shooting) for release in the thick of awards season in December. Directed by… Read More First Trailer Released for A Complete Unknown
By John Corrado There were a lot of good movies released in 2023, but one of the best things about the year that just ended is that it finally felt like the movies were truly, fully back following the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a year when a talky, three-hour biopic like Oppenheimer could make nearly… Read More The Best Movies of 2023
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest work from writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose 2011 breakout film Weekend remains an essential piece of queer cinema, All of Us Strangers is a tender, dreamlike meditation on grief and loneliness. Working from the 1987 Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, Haigh’s film is a ghost story… Read More Review: All of Us Strangers
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Poor Things is the latest from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos following his break into more “mainstream” filmmaking with his Oscar-winning The Favourite, and it’s a weird and wonderful take on the Frankenstein story. Adapting Scottish writer Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name for the screen, Lanthimos… Read More Review: Poor Things
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