By John Corrado Director Oliver Laxe’s Sirât opens on a memorably cinematic scene as a group of outcasts hold a rave in the middle of the Moroccan desert. We see evocative images of massive speakers being set up in the desert, as bodies bop and gyrate in time to the blaring techno music, the beat… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sirât (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado Sentimental Value is Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s followup to his 2021 modern classic The Worst Person in the World, reuniting him with that film’s star Renate Reinsve. If Worst Person was about a quarter-life crisis and searching for meaning in your twenties, Sentimental Value aims for something even more ambitious in scope.… Read More #TIFF50 Review: Sentimental Value (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In her new film Sunshine, Filipina writer-director Antoinette Jadaone crafts a gritty and grounded teenage drama, that offers an interesting glimpse at life in the Philippines from a perspective that I hadn’t really seen… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sunshine (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Written and directed by visual effects artist Seth Worley in his feature directorial debut, Sketch is a nice surprise. It’s a decent and charming live action family film about a girl whose angry drawings… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Sketch (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In The Penguin Lessons, director Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty, Military Wives) crafts a charming, based-on-a-true-story crowdpleaser that balances the sweet friendship between Steve Coogan and a penguin with Argentinian political drama. It’s a… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Penguin Lessons (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. The latest film from Paul Schrader, Oh, Canada focuses on the legacy of a documentary filmmaker who dodged the draft, and how his choice to flee to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Oh, Canada (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. In his second animated feature Flow, following his 2019 debut Away, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis captures the wordless saga of a group of animals trying to survive a flood on their island. The creatures… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Flow (Centrepiece)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. The latest film from Indonesian action filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto (Headshot, The Night Comes for Us), The Shadow Strays is a totally insane and highly stylized action flick. Right from the opening sequence laying waste… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Shadow Strays (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Director Nick Toti’s It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This is a found footage horror movie that definitely works best as a midnight experience shared with an audience. The filmmaker has stated that… Read More #TIFF24 Review: It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here. Former music video director Joseph Kahn follows up his raucous 2017 battle rap satire Bodied with Ick; a sci-fi horror comedy that serves as homage to stereotypical early-2000s high school movies, starring Brandon… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Ick (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Bird is another gritty, slice-of-life drama from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, that also feels like a bit of a diversion. It is recognizably of a piece with her previous… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Bird (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In their latest film The Friend, co-directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee adapt Sigrid Nunez’s novel about a woman coming to terms with the complex relationship she had with an… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Friend (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Directed by Dito Montiel, Riff Raff is an enjoyable dark comedy that mostly just lets its all-star comic cast (including the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Bill Murray, and Pete Davidson)… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Riff Raff (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Emilia Pérez, the latest film from French director Jacques Audiard, is a mix of many things; it’s a pop musical, Mexican melodrama, love story, and cartel crime thriller. It’s a… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Emilia Pérez (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest film directed by The Greatest Showman’s Michael Gracey, Better Man is a biopic of British pop star Robbie Williams, from his boy band days to his solo career.… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Better Man (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer finds the filmmaker interpreting the work of author William S. Burroughs. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Burroughs, which follows its… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Queer (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The feature directorial debut of writer-director Andrew DeYoung, Friendship is a cringe comedy about adult male friendship that fully leans into the absurd. Tim Robinson stars in the film as… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Friendship (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. In his latest film Saturday Night, director Jason Reitman uses a massive and spot-on ensemble cast to meticulously recreate the frantic ninety minutes leading up to the first taping of… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Saturday Night (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. Denzel Washington continues to help shepherd August Wilson’s stage plays to the screen with The Piano Lesson, this time producing the film while his youngest son Malcolm Washington takes over… Read More #TIFF24 Review: The Piano Lesson (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here. The latest vaguely experimental thriller from director Steven Soderbergh, following his self-imposed “retirement” from filmmaking, Presence is a haunted house movie shown from the perspective of the ghost. And it’s… Read More #TIFF24 Review: Presence (Centrepiece)
The Joy of Movies 