By John Corrado As an actor, Harris Dickinson has already impressed us with his performances in Babygirl and Triangle of Sadness. So it’s fitting that, in his confident feature directorial debut Urchin, a stripped down drama about poverty and addiction, he gives another young performer the chance to take centre stage. That actor is Frank… Read More Movie Review: Urchin
By John Corrado NEON has just released a new trailer for Sentimental Value. This is Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s follow up to The Worst Person in the World, reuniting him with that film’s star Renate Reinsve. I saw this one during TIFF, and it’s easily one of the best movies of the year, if not… Read More New Trailer for Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value
By John Corrado Bugonia is the latest film from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who has been on a hot streak with recent Oscar heavyweights The Favorite and Poor Things, as well as last year’s anthology film Kinds of Kindness. The common denominator between these films is Emma Stone, who also appears in Lanthimos’ latest, playing… Read More Movie Review: Bugonia
By John Corrado Regretting You is an adaptation of the Colleen Hoover book, that comes to us from The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone. These two things should tell you what to expect from this film, which is a mix of dramatic weepie and teen romance. Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her husband… Read More Movie Review: Regretting You
By John Corrado Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska is and was not like other Springsteen albums. Stripped down, acoustic, recorded in a bedroom on a 4-track tape recorder, it was a collection of ten deeply personal songs that had him baring his soul in a poetic, sometimes cryptic way. It’s fitting, then, that director Scott… Read More Movie Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
By John Corrado Kiss of the Spider Woman, the new musical film from Dreamgirls director Bill Condon, is a big screen reimagining of the 1992 stage musical from John Kander and Fred Ebb, that was in turn based on a 1976 novel that had a 1985 film adaptation. Set during Argentina’s military dictatorship in 1983, the… Read More Movie Review: Kiss of the Spider Woman
By John Corrado The opening shot of writer-director Mary Bronstein’s intense and suffocating but occasionally darkly funny If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a tight closeup on lead actress Rose Byrne’s face. She is in a doctor’s appointment for her sick daughter (Delaney Quinn), with some disagreement about her treatment plan. The doctor… Read More Movie Review: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
By John Corrado The main appeal of Good Fortune, the long-awaited feature directorial debut of comic actor Aziz Ansari, is getting to see Keanu Reeves play an angel. This is not to in any way diminish the performances of Ansari himself as a down-on-his-luck gig economy worker, or his co-star Seth Rogen as a rich… Read More Movie Review: Good Fortune
By John Corrado Focus Features has just released the official trailer (and poster) for director Chloé Zhao’s gorgeous Hamnet, which is fresh off of winning the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. You can read my 4-star review from the festival right here. This is clearly the studio’s priority this Oscar season, with Jessie Buckley being… Read More Official Trailer for Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet
By John Corrado It’s been fifteen years since the release of director Joseph Kosinki’s Tron: Legacy, a belated follow up to Disney’s 1982 film Tron. This stretch of time between Kosinski’s 2010 film and the new third instalment, Tron: Ares, means that Ares itself feels like a legacy sequel meant to resurrect older IP, in… Read More Movie Review: Tron: Ares
By John Corrado Good Boy, director Ben Leonberg’s new supernatural horror movie, has been gaining buzz for the uniqueness of its premise; it’s a haunted house movie shown from the perspective of a pet dog. The canine in question is Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. Indy’s loyal owner is Todd (Shane Jensen), who… Read More Movie Review: Good Boy
By John Corrado Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars in The Smashing Machine, a very good biopic of early UFC fighter Mark Kerr, that finds the wrestler-turned-actor giving it his all in his first big, meaty dramatic role. The film, which also serves as the first solo outing of director Benny Safdie, after splitting from his… Read More Movie Review: The Smashing Machine
By John Corrado Netflix has just released the official trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankentstein, the director’s long-gestating passion project bringing Mary Shelley’s original novel to the screen. I was lucky enough to see this one at TIFF, and came away impressed (you can read my full review from the festival right here). The production… Read More Official Trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankentstein
By John Corrado Disney has just released the new, full-length trailer for Zootopia 2. This is the highly anticipated sequel to the 2016 smash hit Zootopia, seeing the return of bunny cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), now working together as official law enforcement partners. This trailer gives us a… Read More New Trailer for Disney’s Zootopia 2
By John Corrado Netflix has just put out the official trailer for Jay Kelly. This is Noah Baumbach’s latest film, starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler. It premiered at Venice and Telluride, and is about to play at NYFF. I’m still pretty crushed this one didn’t play TIFF. Clooney stars as the titular Jay Kelly,… Read More Official Trailer for Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly
By John Corrado Anemone, the feature directorial debut of Ronan Day-Lewis, is notable for bringing the filmmaker’s father, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, out of retirement. This is his first acting role since starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, a film that has only grown in stature in the near-decade since it was released. This already… Read More Movie Review: Anemone
By John Corrado The runtime for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is 162 minutes. The length of the movie is surely one of the least pertinent things about it, but it’s worth mentioning because of how kinetic the film feels. Nearly two hours in, I was surprised there was less than an hour… Read More Movie Review: One Battle After Another
By John Corrado In the Finland-shot survival thriller Dead of Winter, which takes place during a Minnesota snowstorm, Emma Thompson is doing her best impression of Frances McDormand in Fargo, and her out-of-character performance is what makes the film worth seeing. Thompson stars as Barb Sorenson, an older lady who is going ice fishing alone… Read More Movie Review: Dead of Winter
By John Corrado A struggling improv comic in Baltimore needs an emergency dentist appointment on Christmas Eve. It sounds like the setup for a joke (and maybe it is), but it’s also the inciting incident of The Baltimorons, a tender and funny chance encounter romance from director Jay Duplass. Duplass crafts the film as a… Read More Movie Review: The Baltimorons
By John Corrado We now have a new trailer (and poster) for Avatar: Fire and Ash, the upcoming third film in James Cameron’s Pandora-set trilogy. This fresh look arrives before the re-release of 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water on October 3rd. It reveals a bit more of the plot and shows us some new… Read More New Trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash
The Joy of Movies 