“One of the filmmaker’s more pitiless efforts, it’s a brutal examination of transactional relationships that feels eerily prophetic today, as if he’d already seen the dire ends to which the 1980s would bring us. Most of the movie takes place in malls, hotels and other commercial settings, split into three chapters following three characters at various stages of selling out.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/10/2022
“He kept a cartoonist’s sensibility in his appreciation for exaggerated lines and curves, and as the later films grew more explicitly artificial, they came to look more and more like his drawings come to life. Fellini was fond of blaring music while shooting scenes, which is why characters always appear to be slightly swaying to the wistful waltzes of Nino Rota’s scores.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/09/2022
“The large format film provides a crispness and clarity impossible to replicate via hard drives with zeroes and ones. Current top-of-the-line digital cinema projection boasts 4K resolution, and while there’s admittedly an apples-to-oranges aspect in comparing pixels to film grain, 70mm presentation is generally estimated to be around the equivalent of 18K.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/07/2022
“An ebullient, well-meaning celebration of sex-positivity, if a little thin. Liu’s trying to counterbalance a culture dominated by Puritanical finger-wagging and slut-shaming, but his approach is also tediously one-note and tends to sap all the danger and mystery from human sexuality, defanging the desires that we often allow to run, and sometimes ruin, our lives.” – North Shore Movies, 06/06/2022
“Cronenberg has confessed that his 1979 gyno-nightmare was drawn from his own experiences in a bitter custody battle, the true-life traumas filtered through a heady mix of icky physiological anomalies and eruptions of entrails. It’s a rare peek at the private life of this intimidatingly intellectual filmmaker, whose work is always personal but seldom autobiographical.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/03/2022
“Director Terence Davies’ splendidly scripted, boldly stylized biopic of the early 20th-century war poet Siegfried Sassoon is a movie madly in love with words in all their pleasures and poisons. It’s about words as weapons, how they can prick and protect and give us places to hide. This is a fine film to watch but an even more enjoyable one to listen to.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/03/2022
“It’s a kick to watch these characters sashay their way through Austen’s timeless tale with margaritas in hand, peppering the traditional rom-com trappings with some spectacularly naughty banter. Fire Island is proudly, indefatigably dirty in ways that movies about minorities are often too timid to be, weighed down by the burdens of representation and role models.” – North Shore Movies, 06/03/2022
“You’ll find bits and pieces of a lot of his previous films in this one, which feels like a cross between a greatest hits album and a grand summation of conversations Cronenberg has been having with audiences since the 1970s. It’s all played as a horny, poker-faced comedy of manners, trying to get you turned on and grossed out at the same time.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/01/2022
SPLICED PERSONALITY 