“Norma Desmond as a doomed soprano, a fading legend parading around a Parisian apartment that’s more like a mausoleum. Dictatorial to her staff and zonked on pills most of the time, she’s imperious, insecure, impossible and irresistible. It’s finally a role the right size for its star, and Jolie is more than ready for her close-up. Maria, you’ve got to see her.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/26/2024
”The band has been able to transcend generational turf wars for the past 60 years, and we should probably be thankful to have a movie like this available in everybody’s living rooms after such a divisive and exhausting election. To paraphrase Lester Bangs’ obituary for Elvis Presley, we may never agree on anything again the way we agreed on The Beatles.” – North Shore Movies, 11/25/2024
“Mitchum was 57 years old and he looked every minute of it; a shambling, still-handsome wreck whose trademark sleepy eyes were sinking deeper by the day. This isn’t the unflappable wiseass Bogart played in The Big Sleep, but rather an older, sadder guy who can’t help but do the right thing and always ends up with nothing to show for it but a broken heart.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/22/2024
“Pascal barely registers onscreen at all, with a good deal of Gladiator II serving as a cautionary tale about what happens to lightweight TV actors when they come up against a bona fide movie star. It’s like every scene is being acted in lowercase letters until along comes big-D Denzel. He’s an absolute joy to watch, and the film languishes in his absence.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2024
“Unlike the Technicolor Oz we grew up with, Chu’s is a land of hazy, low-contrast pinks and faded pastels. The whole movie looks like an Easter basket, which can be tiring on the eyes over such a long haul. Still, it’s an engaging enough half-a-movie, anchored by a sublime comic turn from Ariana Grande as a privileged brat blithely oblivious to her own awfulness.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2024
“You feel safe when other people are laughing. That’s why the movies are still playing. That’s why they find new audiences. People come up to me and say I saved their life, which is staggering to hear. But they just mean that wherever they were growing up, they didn’t think that anybody was like them. Then they saw these movies and realized there is another way.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/19/2024
Honored to have contributed an essay to Imprint’s Directed By Roman Polanski box set, which features the filmmaker’s underrated 1990s run of Bitter Moon, Death And The Maiden and The Ninth Gate. Blake Howard got myself and fellow contributor Lindsey Romain on the mic to talk about reckoning with art made by a known abuser when the art itself is about abuse. – One Heat Minute, 11/19/2024
”Such a noisy, witless puddle of CGI puke I can’t believe Ryan Reynolds isn’t in it. I suppose it will be tempting for critics to describe this movie as a lump of Christmas coal. Except that coal can actually serve a purpose, like heating people’s homes, or giving them black lung disease, both options preferable to sitting though Red One.” – North Shore Movies, 11/15/2024
“A monstrously funny middle finger of a movie that serves as a splenetic lean-in to pretty much every personal and professional criticism Allen has faced throughout his career. It’s a nasty picture, but feels liberating and fresh. Shaking off any semblance of decorum or need to be liked by the audience, the movie is unapologetic, even exhilarating in its rottenness.“ – Crooked Marquee, 11/14/2024
”The story takes place almost entirely on Murphy’s face, swimming in the infinite sadness of those ice blue eyes. The movie is hushed and has the damp chill of Irish winters. Delicate in its observations and devoid of histrionics, Small Things Like These is pretty much exactly the opposite of the kind of project you’d expect an actor to produce after winning an Oscar.” – North Shore Movies, 11/08/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 