By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. In Moonage Daydream, documentary filmmaker Brett Morgan weaves an exciting and highly cinematic portrait of late music and queer icon David Bowie. The film blends concert footage with old interviews to offer a compelling window into… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Moonage Daydream (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The directorial debut of Korean actor Lee Jung-jae (the Emmy-winning star of Squid Game), Hunt is a political thriller set at the height of tensions between North and South Korea in the 1980s. Lee stars in… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Hunt (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. British writer-director Joanna Hogg follows up her one-two punch of The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II with The Eternal Daughter, a simmering, haunting mother-daughter story that is infused with elements of Gothic Horror. The film… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Eternal Daughter (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq makes his feature debut with Joyland, firmly establishing himself as a very exciting new voice in international cinema. Adapted from his 2019 short film Darling, Sadiq’s film, which was awarded the Un… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Joyland (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. The latest film from the currently imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, No Bears is a work of meta filmmaking that weaves together two narratives. Panahi casts himself as a filmmaker who is directing his latest work… Read More #TIFF22 Reviews: No Bears (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 8th to 18th. Nan Goldin is an artist and photographer who has set her sights on holding Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family to account for creating and pushing the drug OxyContin, and fuelling the opioid crisis ravaging America.… Read More #TIFF22 Review: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (TIFF Docs)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The Banshees of Inisherin, the latest brilliantly written character study from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), tells the story of two friends; farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and fiddler Colm… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Banshees of Inisherin (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Director Peter Farrelly made the switch to making “serious” films in 2018 with Green Book, a career pivot that (controversially) won him the People’s Choice Award at TIFF and subsequently the Oscar for Best Picture. Farrelly… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson returns with a big budget follow up to his 2019 surprise hit Knives Out, and I wouldn’t think of spoiling what transpires, but I’m also not going… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Sarah Polley, whose previous trio of films Away from Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell are all in the established canon of celebrated Canadian cinema, makes her long awaited return to directing with Women Talking. An adaptation of the… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Women Talking (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Empire of Light, the latest film from writer-director Sam Mendes, is a solid period piece that also serves as a very personal work from the British filmmaker. It’s set in a seaside town in the 1980s,… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Empire of Light (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Starring, co-written and executive produced by Billy Eichner, Bros is the first big romantic comedy from a major studio to focus on a gay couple, starring a cast of queer actors, and you know what? This… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Bros (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Paul Mescal, the breakout star of the Irish miniseries Normal People, delivers a poignant performance in the film Aftersun as a young father on vacation in Turkey. Calum (Mescal) is on holiday with his 11-year-old daughter… Read More #TIFF22 Review: Aftersun (Contemporary World Cinema)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The People’s Joker, which had its already infamous premiere at Midnight Madness the other night, is an ambitious art project that finds its creator Vera Drew messing around in the DC Comics universe to tell the… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The People’s Joker (Midnight Madness)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Sally Hawkins stars in The Lost King as Philippa Langley, a writer in England living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome) who has hit a wall in her life, with an ex-husband (Steve Coogan)… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Lost King (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The latest from writer-director Mia Hansen-Love, One Fine Morning is another resonant and engaging romantic drama from the French filmmaker. Léa Seydoux stars as Sandra, a translator whose father Georg (Pascal Greggory) is suffering from a… Read More #TIFF22 Review: One Fine Morning (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★½ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. The directorial debut of actress Sanaa Lathan, On the Come Up is a frustratingly mediocre high school drama centred around an aspiring rapper. The film is based on a novel by Angie Thomas, who also wrote… Read More #TIFF22 Review: On the Come Up (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Florian Zeller’s The Father was an impeccably structured and brilliantly acted film adapted from his own stage play that took us inside the mind of a man with dementia. Which is why Zeller’s follow-up film The… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Son (Gala Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, an adaptation of writer Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play, finds the director back in the same stripped down character study mode as his 2008 masterpiece The Wrestler. And where that film gave… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Whale (Special Presentations)
By John Corrado ★★★★ (out of 4) The 2022 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 8th to 18th. Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is an autobiographical work that finds the filmmaker at his most introspective, drawing upon experiences from his own childhood. And it’s magical. As someone who grew up obsessed with Spielberg and his… Read More #TIFF22 Review: The Fabelmans (Special Presentations)
The Joy of Movies 