“The wily and surprising Sanctuary reminds me of independent films from an earlier era, back when stuff you’d see at Sundance wasn’t as concerned about sending the right social messages and instead got messy and mixed things up a little. This isn’t a dirty or explicit picture. If anything, it might be a little too tasteful in that regard. But it’s a fun film for grown-ups.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/01/2023
“The affectations and allusions are entirely deliberate. Leone, his film critic pal Dario Argento and a hotshot young director named Bernardo Bertolucci spent months binging every ancient Hollywood oater they could find while coming up with the story, stealing scenes and scenarios willy-nilly. Once Upon A Time In The West isn’t just any old Western, it’s all of them.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/26/2023
“The afterparty is the brainchild of Identical Cousins, who have held similar Peaks shindigs in the past. They’re calling the Crystal Ballroom event ‘a mini-festival of fan art, an immersive space where we inhabit the dream together. We want folks to hear the wind, pass through the woods and slip through the curtains backstage to another dimension.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/26/2023
“Kids are expensive. 79-year-old Robert De Niro just had another one, his seventh. Alimonies aren’t cheap either, nor I imagine are property taxes when you own half the hotels and restaurants in lower Manhattan. What I’m saying is that the guy’s got serious overhead and About My Father is a painless enough way for a beloved actor to pay some bills.” – North Shore Movies, 05/26/2023
“Palladoro avoids the cathartic arguments that usually fuel this kind of family drama. Instead, he’s content to just be with these people, sitting alongside them and observing, mostly in moments of repose. At times, Monica feels like a movie made up of all the stuff other movies cut out. This unconventional approach yields unexpected rewards.” – North Shore Movies, 05/26/2023
“An accumulation of lived experience is felt over the film’s 147 minutes, eschewing melodrama in favor of meaningful gestures and knowing nods. But the repetitiveness of the Same Time, Next Year scenario becomes a bit of a chore as the characters enter into middle age. There’s some excellent filmmaking on display here. There’s also an awful lot of it.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/25/2023
“A deliberately outrageous provocation, Master Gardener seems designed to stir up the kind of social media discourse that will make you throw your phone into the ocean. But then, that’s always been this director’s deal. If Scorsese is cinema culture’s beloved grandpa, Schrader’s the irascible uncle who says amusingly inappropriate things during holiday dinners.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/18/2023
Jazzed to join my dear friend Jen Johans for the second chapter in her epic exploration of Dennis Hopper’s career. Alongside pals Jed Ayers, William Boyle, S.A. Cosby and Jordan Harper, we discuss the actor’s miracle year of 1986, when a newly sober Hopper reestablished himself with the triumphant trifecta of Hoosiers, River’s Edge and Blue Velvet. – Watch With Jen, 05/16/2023
“A pretty good explainer as to why most things you buy now are crap, BlackBerry dramatizes the collapse of the once-ubiquitous handheld device as a cautionary tale of tech bro hubris and the inevitable consequences of a growth-at-all-costs mentality. Interestingly ambivalent and scabrously funny, it’s an inverted Social Network for also-rans.” – North Shore Movies, 05/16/2023
“The sixties haven’t made it out to these small towns yet, where kids still listen to doo-wop and drink milkshakes in their muscle cars while cruising the downtown strip. Lucas’s sophomore effort is a wistful picture about the twilight of American innocence, set on the precipice of the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam. It’s the last night of summer, in more ways than one.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/12/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 