”I know I’m in the minority on this, but I find Carey Mulligan to be one of the biggest buzzkills in cinema, always scowling and bringing scenes down. The second hour of Maestro is a drag even before it becomes a cancer movie. This is one of those biopics where the storylines are all resolved with a half-hour to go, and then you sit there waiting for everyone to die.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2023
”Phoenix’s pouty performance is going to be controversial, with lines like ‘Destiny brought me to this lamb chop’ already breaking the internet. I think he’s a hoot, and Vanessa Kirby’s magnetically imperious Joesphine is every bit as delightful, constantly calling her husband’s bluffs in a randy, dom-sub relationship that’s practically a dirty comedy act.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2023
”A sumptuously photographed, pansexual sleaze-feast with a thing for mood lighting and bodily fluids. When the movie’s really cooking it plays like Pasolini’s Teorema by way of Cruel Intentions. This is all fine, disreputable fun until what might be the stupidest, most misguided ending I’ve seen since… well, since Fennell’s previous picture, Promising Young Woman.” – North Shore Movies, 11/21/2023
“America’s loss of innocence writ large – and I mean really large – The Deer Hunter is a work of such self-conscious, chest-thumping grandiosity that it’s easy to see why the film has fallen out of favor in some circles. Yet there’s something elemental about the movie’s boys’ adventure machismo, a primal force that overpowers Cimino’s more cartoonish flourishes.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/17/2023
”Haynes stages their scenes together with the two side-by-side, staring into mirrors, so we can better see Moore’s physicality bleeding into Portman’s. May December belongs to a rich tradition of great directors doing Persona riffs, like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Robert Altman’s 3 Women. But there’s more going on here than mimicry and homage.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/16/2023
”What’s so disappointing about Thanksgiving is that Roth has scrapped the sleazy, Reagan-era aesthetic of his original Grindhouse trailer and instead made an homage to a much lamer and tamer era of slasher movies. This is a crappy Scream knockoff with bad New England accents. It might as well be called I Know What You Did Last November.” – North Shore Movies, 11/16/2023
“It’s a fantastic premise, but it hasn’t been fully fleshed out into a story. Writer-director Borgli’s previous picture, the Norwegian import Sick Of Myself, ran out of places to go after about an hour. Faced with a similar impasse, Dream Scenario settles for being a facile satire of celebrity cancel culture. You can feel the film’s ambitions shrinking as it goes along.” – North Shore Movies, 11/16/2023
”Anyway, I’m assured this is very different from the 32 previous Marvel movies because this time they’re looking for a glowing magic space bracelet instead of a glowing magic space rock glove. Entirely different accessory, but the movie still ends with everyone trying to close an interdimensional portal, because sometimes you gotta play the hits.” – North Shore Movies, 11/10/2023
”’Godfrey is a fun hang, absolutely. But I tap out fast,’ Soderbergh admits. ‘It’s so abstract. I leave inspired, excited and confused. It’s one of those things where I go, ‘I’ll never see the UFO, but I believe he saw it.’ You go with that. You go with the resume, which is absolutely unique among American filmmakers. With each film he creates a new grammar.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/08/2023
“For most folks, I’d imagine the idea of being stuck in an airport overnight with an ex-girlfriend sounds more like a horror movie than a romantic comedy. But Ryan’s going after something a little bumpier and bittersweet. This interestingly confused picture roots through some of her more ambivalent feelings about the genre she came to define in the 1990s.” – North Shore Movies, 11/08/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 