“Danny and Michael Philippou’s gnarly Hansel And Gretel riff follows two grieving step-siblings in the hands of a sinister foster mother played to the hilt by Sally Hawkins. In most movies like this when you’re supposed to believe a child is in danger, a part of you knows that the filmmakers wouldn’t dare kill off a little kid. These dudes would totally kill a little kid.” – North Shore Movies, 05/30/2025
“The thing about Irishmen is that they’re really good at telling stories, and whenever Bono tones down the airy abstractions and gets rooted in the specific, the movie becomes quite winning. The best parts involve the superstar’s fraught relationship with his emotionally withholding father. Get an Irish guy going about their Da and it’s gonna be a teary evening.” – North Shore Movies, 05/29/2025
“This unproduced screenplay penned by Brian De Palma in the 1990s is the blueprint for a most eccentric thriller. It’s a heady, tongue-in-cheek swirl of the director’s pet preoccupations, with the villain’s plan modeled on the opera house climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much. De Palma is literally weaponizing his love of Hitchcock here.” – North Shore Movies, 05/29/2025
“There’s not much to Thompson’s play beyond folksy wisecracks and pat affirmations. But director Mark Rydell’s big-screen version boasts an alchemical element which makes On Golden Pond far more than the sum of its treacly parts. The leads aren’t just movie stars, they’re movie legends. It’s twilight for the Thayers, and for an entire era of Hollywood.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/23/2025
“An unseemly amount of the dialogue in The Final Reckoning is like Baldwin’s ‘living manifestation of destiny’ speech, except not played for laughs. There are films about the life of Christ that spend less time proclaiming the divinity of their protagonist. Yet just like in the movies, right when all seems lost, Cruise miraculously comes through.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/22/2025
Had a terrific time talking to old friend and George V. Higgins expert Jake Mulligan about The Friends Of Eddie Coyle for WBUR CitySpace’s Set In Boston series. We discussed how the film spawned an entire genre of Boston crime films, even though none that followed had a fraction of the verisimilitude. Also, an excuse to tell some amazing Mitchum stories. – WBUR CitySpace, 05/16/2025
“’Somehow in the screwed up world in which we find ourselves, a ghastly amount of people have lost sight of the fact that these are the bad guys,’ says the Somerville Theatre’s Ian Judge. ‘This narrative cannot be allowed to be blurred by modern day losers stoking the flames of antisemitism and fascism. These movies help us remember who we are at our best.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/15/2025
”He was so much taller and blonder and better-looking than everyone around him, like some sort of storybook Nordic prince. But taking another look at the films in the Brattle retrospective, one comes away with how much the actor loved to undercut his matinee idol appearance. Kilmer may have looked like a golden god, but he was often a very silly goose.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/12/2025
Joined my buddy Blake Howard to discuss my favorite Gene Hackman performance. The Criterion Collection just put out a spiffy edition of Night Moves, director Arthur Penn’s definitive Watergate noir in which Hackman’s private eye becomes the avatar of an exhausted era, playing a game in which nobody’s winning. One side’s just losing slower than the other. – One Heat Minute, 05/12/2025
”Not a lot of film students wind up having their homework released by a major studio, but the then-27-year-old wunderkind could never be accused of thinking small. Coppola’s freewheeling adaptation of David Benedictus’ 1963 novel has style and ambition to burn. It’s a wild, visually spectacular calling card in the service of material that’s honestly pretty puerile.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/09/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 