”Coppola’s dream project is a grandiose, go-for-broke folly, the last gamble of an 85-year-old legend pushing all his chips into the middle of the table. Every scene shows you something you’ve never seen before in a way you’ve never seen it. The film’s flaws are obvious, plentiful and did not bother me in the slightest. An hour after it ended I was still smiling.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/26/2024
“Wolfs doesn’t feel like a real movie while you’re watching it. It’s more like an uncanny simulacrum of something. A friend said he’d assumed the trailer was an elaborate Nespresso ad, and there is a sort of SuperBowl commercial vibe to the picture, though it put me more in mind of a fake movie parody in a Hollywood satire that isn’t particularly funny.” – North Shore Movies, 09/26/2024
“A movie about images that won’t stop over-explaining itself in words. Everything that’s clearly visible onscreen is also reiterated through declamatory dialogue and a voice-over narration so stilted and on the nose it makes Blade Runner sound like Days Of Heaven. There’s nary a moment in Lee when the pictures are allowed to speak for themselves.” – North Shore Movies, 09/26/2024
”Taking place in a slightly nicer, less sweary version of one of those upstate New York towns you’d find in a Richard Russo novel. I’ll Be Right There is an easy and not unamusing sit. But given the talent involved one wishes there might have been a bit more friction. Conflicts are softened with pillow shots of catalog scenery and adult contemporary music montages.” – North Shore Movies, 09/26/2024
Joined my dear friend Jen Johans for her annual physical media roundup, talking about Paramount’s new 4K UHD edition of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead and how gratifying it has been to see the reappraisal this movie has received after being so rudely dismissed during its original release. We also talked about Perfect Days and Bad Lieutenant. – Watch With Jen, 09/24/2024
“It’s impossible not to be charmed by Lyonne’s female Peter Falk routine. This is her most Cassavetes-esque showcase yet, whiplashing between funny and sad mid-sentence. Coon plays the hardass we all know will eventually soften, yet it’s a testament to her performance that the moment she did was when I finally stopped choking back the tears and let them roll.” – North Shore Movies, 09/20/2024
“Clocks are everywhere in Rumble Fish, looming large and small over the proceedings. The time-lapse shots of whizzing clouds that begin the picture return with a vengeance throughout, speeding their way through windowpane reflections to remind us just how quickly the world is passing these characters by, and that time is running out for Rusty James.” – Crooked Marquee, 09/20/2024
”Fargeat’s film is sickening in a productive way, using outré body horror techniques to address the cruelty of contemporary beauty standards and the self-loathing that festers in our appearance-obsessed age. It can be a little stupid sometimes and at 140 minutes it’s egregiously overlong, but The Substance is about something, and it’s alive.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/19/2024
“The movie isn’t much interested in exploring its central gimmick — I’m not sure if I should be annoyed or grateful that it doesn’t try to explain how these two are able to text each other — mostly content to be a treacly teen romance between a dull young man with no faults and an irritating girl with poor priorities. It’s like Peggy Sue Got Married without the wisdom.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/19/2024
”A fascinating hybrid of stage and screen. Despite some striking, classically Frankenheimer compositions, it’s always very much a recording of a theatrical performance. At no point does it feel like you’re watching an actual quote-unquote movie. But you are watching The Iceman Cometh starring Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan, and that’s sure as hell something.” – Crooked Marquee, 09/13/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 