“Cage bottoms out big-time with this chintzy reboot of a Christian movie franchise that previously starred noted Stephen Hawking-debunker and evangelical pest Kirk Cameron. Left Behind has the flimsy sets and tinny synthesizer score (not to mention the character names) of a 1980’s porn flick. and Nic’s embarrassment comes through in his performance.” – North Shore Movies, 10/05/2014
GONE GIRL * * * 1 / 2
Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens and Tyler Perry. Screenplay by Gillian Flynn. Directed by David Fincher.
“A hysterical treatise about how that insidious collection of tubes called the Internet has destroyed our family values and ruined everybody’s lives, this has got to be the crotchetiest, most alarmist movie ever directed by a 36-year-old man. Men, Women & Children would probably be the worst film released all year, had Jason Reitman not also made Labor Day.” – Movie Mezzanine, 10/02/2014
“But something’s slightly off about Ian’s upward trajectory. He’s suffering from bizarre, ever-expanding interstitial interludes–surreal gross-out hallucinations inspired by crappy eighties television programs and exercise videos. The spot-on parodies include Tough As Nails Tiger Team A and (my personal favorite) Officer Zygor, Alien Cop.” – North Shore Movies, 10/02/2014
Talking with fellow Boston Online Film Critics Association members Bob Chipman and Charlie Nash about a horror-saturated month in the city’s repertory film scene. Trigger Warning: This one gets kinda crass. – BOFCA, 09/30/2014
Legendary director William Friedkin spent last weekend at the Harvard Film Archive.
“All the academic discussions of Star Wars and pornography, the non-stop masturbation jokes — Clerks was the closest thing I’d ever seen to my own life in a movie. Hell, not only did I work in a video store, I worked in a video store where Kevin Smith bought LaserDiscs. Watching that movie at the Angelika felt like somebody farted in church.” – Movie Mezzanine, 09/19/2014
“Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. shoots the city as a gorgeous ruin, favoring sparse wide shots with heavy negative space bearing down on these isolated characters. There’s a doomy grandiosity befitting the title, and when violence inevitably occurs it is something not to be cheered, but mourned.” – North Shore Movies, 09/19/2014
“The most beautiful irony is that Altas Shrugged’s previous two installments proved so financially calamitous, Aligaro and his co-producers financed this one with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Hard not to wonder what Ayn Rand would have thought about her precious bootstrap self-sufficiency manifesto being funded by begging for handouts.” – North Shore Movies, 09/16/2014
THE DROP * * 1 / 2
Starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz and James Gandolfini. Screenplay by Dennis Lehane. Directed by Michael R. Roskam.
SPLICED PERSONALITY 