“The kind of movie they say they don’t make anymore, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is a smashing, old fashioned entertainment with a saucy, contemporary edge. This is a brainy crowd-pleaser focused on the pleasures of big movie star performances and crafty writing, two quantities in short supply these days at franchise-dominated multiplexes.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/26/2019
Monthly Archives: November 2019
MARRIAGE STORY
“For such a messy subject, Marriage Story feels a mite too meticulously designed. There’s none of the sickening emotional dread you feel in obvious influences like Scenes From A Marriage or Husbands And Wives, but rather just the sadness of watching likable people muck about hurting each other while you’re waiting for them to work through it all eventually.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/22/2019
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
”It’s a promising setup: a flip, ‘90s cynic taken aback by Rogers’ unflappable sincerity, assuming this has all gotta be some kind of act and digging deeper to discover that the guy’s the real deal. Unfortunately it comes off like what would’ve happened if Citizen Kane had devoted half the movie to the home life of that reporter who was investigating Rosebud.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/20/2019
THE REPORT
“This is one of those movies where terrific character actors wear lanyards and stride purposefully down hallways speaking to one another in hushed tones. I love this kind of stuff, and Burns keeps the pace percolating with the jittery handheld energy and slinky synthesizer sounds associated with Soderbergh, if not his mentor’s gift for indelible images.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/15/2019
THE IRISHMAN
“A gangster movie to end all gangster movies, akin to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in that it finds a filmmaker reflecting on the genre he helped define, issuing what feels like his final word on the subject. It’s sprawling, enthralling and often hilarious when it isn’t busy being deeply, unfathomably sad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/13/2019
DOCTOR SLEEP
“Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is a 2010 for The Shining, a doggedly prosaic sequel to a movie that defies understanding. There’s a plodding logic and a grounded, workmanlike approach to the material. I find Flanagan’s sensibility a bit on the drab side but it’s perhaps ideal for more literal-minded genre fans who haunt Reddit threads and Vox explainers.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/08/2019
JOJO RABBIT
“It’s all emblematic of the movie’s stunted worldview, snickering in-jokes, and deliberate distance from anything resembling reality. Waititi tells us that people are truly good at heart in a movie where Anne Frank lives at the end and dances to David Bowie. This is a deeply, distressingly insulated picture. It’s the Funko Pop Collector’s Edition of Shoah.” – North Shore Movies, 11/01/2019