By John Corrado In Nuremberg, director James Vanderbilt dramatizes the Nuremberg trials, when members of the Nazi high command were arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity in the wake of World War II. The result is a rock solid old school historical drama that works surprisingly well on every level. Rami Malek… Read More Movie Review: Nuremberg
By John Corrado If, on the surface, Oh, Hi! might seem likely your typical indie romantic dramedy, it’s one with a blackly comic twist. Writer-director Sophie Brooks sets the stage for this in the opening scene, with female lead Iris (Molly Gordon) frantically telling her best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan) that she “did something bad.”… Read More Movie Review: Oh, Hi!
By John Corrado Agathe Robinson (Camille Rutherford) is an aspiring romance novelist who works as a shopkeeper at Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Company. She fantasizes about Jane Austen, and longs for her own love story, but is perpetually single, and struggling with writer’s block. Agathe is the protagonist of writer-director Laura Piani’s delightful new romantic… Read More Movie Review: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
By John Corrado In his latest film I’m Still Here, which received a surprise Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) offers a portrait of life during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s through the lens of mainly being a family drama. Salles’ film serves as a biography of… Read More Movie Review: I’m Still Here
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 The first English-language feature from Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door is an involving and morally complex – if occasionally uneven – melodrama, built around a pair of compelling performances from Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. The film (which was awarded the Golden Lion at Venice) opens with Moore’s Ingrid,… Read More Movie Review: The Room Next Door
By John Corrado Saoirse Ronan takes on the role of a young alcoholic in The Outrun. It’s a role that allows the actress to deliver an incredible performance showcasing her full depth and range, as the drama depicts the addiction and recovery process as an ongoing journey. It’s based on author Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the… Read More Movie Review: The Outrun
By John Corrado Between the Temples, the latest work from director and co-writer Nathan Silver, is a sort of indie screwball comedy that reinvents that old trope of finding yourself through an unconventional relationship. The two figures at the centre of it are Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwarzman), a cantor at his synagogue who has found… Read More Movie Review: Between the Temples
By John Corrado In We Grown Now, writer-director Minhal Haig offers a vivid portrait of childhood and growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects circa 1992. Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) are two young Black boys who are best friends. They hang out together in an abandoned unit, and the film… Read More Movie Review: We Grown Now
By John Corrado Based on the real life case of the Littlehampton Letters (with an opening title card assuring us that “this is more true than you’d think”), Wicked Little Letters is an amusing trifle set in a small English town in 1920. The story centres around the scandal involving a series of insulting letters… Read More Movie Review: Wicked Little Letters
By John Corrado The latest animated work from co-directors Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, the filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated Chico and Rita, They Shot the Piano Player is an ambitious if uneven mix of animation and docudrama. The film opens at the Strand Book Store in New York City, where fictitious music journalist Jeff Harris… Read More Movie Review: They Shot the Piano Player
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The Persian Version, which premiered at Sundance in January, finds writer-director Maryam Keshavarz (Circumstance) dipping into her own background as an Iranian-American woman to craft an enjoyable, ambitious mother-daughter dramedy. The film centres around Leila (Layla Mohammadi), an Iranian-American aspiring filmmaker living in New York City. She has… Read More Review: The Persian Version
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