“Good lord, is Terrifier 2 disgusting. It’s also a blast, if you’re into this kind of thing. Thornton has a terrific physicality. There’s something silly about him, a lightness that makes the ridiculously extended dismemberments feel like an elaborate joke: a gag in both senses of the word. It’s all in good fun even while being one of the grossest movies ever made.” – North Shore Movies, 10/27/2022
“A wonderful movie about two ordinary people trying to do their best to muddle through everyday circumstances, with the humane acknowledgement that such things are tougher on some folks than others and an opportunity for transcendence in our quietest moments. Causeway is the kind of film we come to festivals like IFFBoston to see.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/25/2022
“Alan Parker’s scandalous supernatural thriller Angel Heart is scary as hell but also something of a hoot, with a mordant sense of humor and some of the genre’s greatest character names. The crooner is called Johnny Favorite, De Niro plays Louis Cyphre and there’s a jazz musician named Toots Sweet. Even the title turns out to be a terrible pun.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/24/2022
My second dispatch from the 60th annual New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, Maria Schrader’s She Said and Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave.
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“Rewritten by director Amy Holden Jones, the resulting picture is a fiendishly funny parody played completely straight. So straight that a lot of dismissive critics confused it with the genuine article. But then again, as a horny pubescent I rented the movie on VHS more than once for obvious reasons, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in on the joke, either.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/21/2022
“McGregor still hasn’t figured out how to do an American accent, tripping over his over-enunciated R’s like they’re loose floorboards. He’s otherwise fine as the fussbudget brother to Hawke’s mercurial musician, the two actors suggesting a rich backstory for which Garcia’s schematic screenplay provides only the boldest of melodramatic strokes.” – North Shore Movies, 10/21/2022
“Ticket To Paradise feels like being handed a glass of water after a long walk across the desert. It’s lukewarm tap water and a little cloudy, but you’re grateful for it all the same. The picture coasts almost entirely on the charisma of its superstar leads and the massive amount of affection we in the audience have accrued for them over the years.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/20/2022
My first dispatch from the 60th annual New York Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Claire Denis’ Stars At Noon, Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s Personality Crisis: One Night Only and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle Of Sadness.
“More of a conversation-starter than an argument, asking questions for which there are no easy answers and playing upon our sympathies to trick the audience into interrogating our own personal permission structures. There’s nothing didactic about Tár, nor any simple moral you can hashtag or put on a bumper sticker. The film is complicated. Difficult.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/12/2022
“The whole point of going to a Dario Argento picture is to see the gorgeously operatic, over-the-top set-pieces. But while Arnaud Rebotini’s score finds an appropriately soaring 1980’s synth groove, the murky cinematography by Matteo Cocco is strictly amateur hour, offering none of the director’s trademark kinky colors or lurid camera movements.” – North Shore Movies, 10/12/2022
SPLICED PERSONALITY 