By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) George Clooney’s latest film as a director, The Boys in the Boat is a familiar but mostly enjoyable underdog sports movie that serves as another they don’t make ’em like they used to effort from the actor turned filmmaker, following his coming-of-age drama The Tender Bar. Adapted from… Read More Review: The Boys in the Boat
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
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The latest from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron (which had its North American premiere as the opening night film at TIFF) is an enchanting, gorgeously animated fantasy about life and death. The film is Miyazaki’s first since The Wind Rises a decade ago, which… Read More Review: The Boy and the Heron
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The sophomore feature from director William Oldroyd (Lady MacBeth), Eileen is a solid little psychological thriller that is all about building a sense of atmosphere to slowly suffocate us, before revealing the story’s true intentions. Adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh‘s 2015 novel of the same name, the story is… Read More Review: Eileen
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following his 2018 directorial debut A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper now turns his attention to the life of New York composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the biopic Maestro, casting himself in the leading role. The film spans decades in the life of Bernstein from the 1940s… Read More Review: Maestro
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, the writer-director’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning debut Promising Young Woman, is an overly ambitious mixed bag of a film. The film’s two stars, Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, are good in the leading roles as young men with palpable homoerotic tension between them, and there… Read More Review: Saltburn
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) It’s the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios this year, and what better way to celebrate this milestone than with Wish, a charming new musical fairy tale that harkens back to Classic Disney. The film (which opens with a storybook and those four magical words “once upon… Read More Review: Wish
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The title of director Todd Haynes’s new elevated melodrama May December refers to the extreme age gap between Gracie Atherton (Julianne Moore) and her husband Joe Yoo (Charles Melton). Their relationship began when he was twelve and she was 36, and sent her to jail for years amid a flurry… Read More Review: May December
By Jon Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) Built around the pun in its title, It’s a Wonderful Knife is an ode to Frank Capra’s perennial classic It’s a Wonderful Life, except done in the style of a Christmas slasher comedy. The film is set in the town of Angel Falls, and follows a teen girl… Read More Review: It’s a Wonderful Knife
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Eight years after the release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 in 2015, director Francis Lawrence returns to this franchise with The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, an adaptation of author Suzanne Collins’ 2020 prequel novel of the same name. The story is… Read More Review: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
By Jon Corrado ★½ (out of 4) The 33rd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Marvels is both a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel and a continuation of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, and it’s honestly kind of a mess. Directed by Nia DaCosta (the Candyman remake), this is the weakest film yet in a… Read More Review: The Marvels
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) Director Madeleine Gavin’s documentary Beyond Utopia offers a compelling glimpse inside North Korea, through the eyes of those who risk their lives trying to escape the country. The real pull of Gavin’s film is the secret, handheld footage shot by defectors themselves, showing us the perilous journey that… Read More Review: Beyond Utopia
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, the writer-director’s best film since Lost in Translation, is a biopic of Priscilla Presley that focuses on her relationship to Elvis, offering an unglamorous but authentic look at their troubled romance. In its own way, Priscilla also serves as the subdued, melancholic counterpart to the… Read More Review: Priscilla
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) Following his Old Hollywood passion project Mank, director David Fincher returns to the thriller genre with The Killer, a slickly crafted adaptation of Alexis Nolent’s French graphic novel exploring the daily grind of a professional assassin. Fincher’s film opens with its unnamed titular assassin (played by Michael Fassbender) staying… Read More Review: The Killer
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) After completing his Halloween trilogy last year with the divisive Halloween Ends, director David Gordon Green now sets his sights on rebooting another classic horror property with The Exorcist: Believer, though the results are largely disappointing this time around. Like Green’s 2018 legacy sequel Halloween, The Exorcist: Believer positions… Read More Review: The Exorcist: Believer
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
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is already one of the biggest selling concert tours of all time, a massive juggernaut that has generated billions of dollars in profits, providing a boost to local economies wherever she goes. The success of this tour one hundred percent speaks to the cultural… Read More Review: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The new English-language short film from writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way of Life is an enjoyable queer Western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal that serves as the Spanish filmmaker’s “answer” to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which he was offered to direct but declined. The short, which premiered… Read More Review: Strange Way of Life
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The latest film from New York writer-director Rebecca Miller (her first since Maggie’s Plan in 2015), She Came to Me is an absurd, operatic melodrama that takes the bones of a romantic comedy and remixes it into a sort of soap opera. The result is somewhat of an… Read More Review: She Came to Me
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) In the Canadian time travel comedy Relax, I’m From the Future, New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby is delightfully able to take centre stage as Casper, a time traveller from an unspecified point in the future, who lands back in the 2020s. The title comes from Casper’s reassurance to… Read More Review: Relax, I’m From the Future
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