“This was an important afternoon for me, as a kid obsessed with the latest Star Wars and Spielberg pictures realized that old black-and-white movies could also be a blast. I had so much fun watching The Lady Vanishes that I put off seeing it again for another 40 years or so, fearing that the film couldn’t possibly live up to the thrill of that first discovery.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/25/2025
“Sandler doesn’t star in these movies anymore so much as he hosts them, graciously ceding the stage to his guests and trying to make sure everyone has a good time. Nearly half-an-hour longer than the original, Happy Gilmore 2 is an amiable, undisciplined shambles so good-natured it’s hard not to enjoy even when the jokes fall flat. Geniality goes a long way.” – North Shore Movies, 07/25/2025
“The screenplay for Oh, Hi! requires Iris and her kooky friends to do so many stupid, bizarre and illogical things, I started wondering exactly how old they were supposed to be. There’s a line between watching young people who are still figuring stuff out and characters who make you question how they are able to feed and bathe themselves.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/24/2025
“Copping some neat mid-century modern looks from Mad Men, but with contemporary hairstyles and idioms so as not to alienate youngsters, it’s the MCU’s usual M.O. of staying grounded in a deliberately drab, everyday reality. These muted Pop Art colors don’t even pop, because the last thing you’d want from a Fantastic Four movie is for things to get too fantastical.” – North Shore Movies, 07/22/2025
“More of a mood than a movie, conjuring the weirdly sluggish banality of life during an emergency – the way the whole world seems to be hurrying up to wait – as well as the odd resignation with which we humans are adapting to our ongoing climate catastrophe. It has a kind of hazy, languorous vibe that’s keyed into the Florida humidity and hot rain.” – North Shore Movies, 07/18/2025
“Eddington has something to offend (or annoy) just about everybody. The movie skewers sacred cows and picks low-hanging fruit, offering bluntly amusing sights like a young white girl lecturing a Black cop about systemic oppression, or Phoenix with a campaign sign that reads: ‘Your being manipulated.’ Aster is trying to cram in all the absurdity of our recent history.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/17/2025
“Other directors tell stories. Robert Altman explored ecosystems. No filmmaker more playfully examined the hierarchies in which we humans like to arrange ourselves, every movie a bustling community that seemed more discovered than staged. Altman’s improv-heavy, overlapping dialogue and roving camera made his films feel caught on the fly.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/14/2025
It was my great privilege to be the dumb guy talking to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Henry James scholar Megan Marshall after WBUR CitySpace’s Set In Boston screening of Merchant Ivory’s The Bostonians. Topics included the difficulties of shooting at the Athenaeum and how the movie tries to put an inspirational spin on the novel’s downbeat ending. – WBUR CitySpace, 07/11/2025
“Beverly Hills Cop is an extremely easy film to watch, floating from scene to scene on the characters’ chemistry and Murphy’s incandescent charisma. The generic crime story makes it even cozier, with familiar beats that don’t take too much focus away from the people we’re enjoying. You can see why it was #1 at the box office for 14 weeks. The movie is good company.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/11/2025
“Basically a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie in different costumes, with everyone being breezily nonchalant around garishly colored space creatures and indulging in occasional flights of po-faced sentimentality. But what works in the Marvel quip factory doesn’t mesh with the Man of Steel. There’s no awe in this Superman, no magnificence.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/10/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 