”Supposedly adapted from a novel by The Punisher writer Chuck Dixon, the screenplay by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone is an uncredited amalgam of Liam Neeson dad fantasies warmed over with sprinkles of Epstein QAnon seasoning and a lot of dolorous honor and duty stuff about the armed forces. It’s all pretty draggy, downcast and should have been a lot more fun.” – North Shore Movies, 03/27/2025
”It’s a Guiraudie movie without any onscreen sex, yet it’s the one in which characters are driven daffiest by their desires. Repression makes everything worse, it seems. Misericordia has a wicked sense of humor that sneaks up on you. It’s an uneasy, pokerfaced kind of comedy that thrives on the viewer stewing in discomfort over the increasingly amoral twists.” – North Shore Movies, 03/27/2025
”Director Burnett’s whimsical 1999 romance was long thought lost for good; a casualty of cruel critics, fickle distributors and the precarious indie film ecosystem. But thanks to the valiant rescue efforts of the good folks at Milestone Film and Video, a new 4K restoration of this quirky little charmer is finally seeing the light of a projector at the Brattle Theatre.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/26/2025
Joined my buddy Blake Howard for his new podcast about John Frankenheimer’s underrated 1998 espionage thriller. We discuss the killer script by David Mamet and the wittiness of De Niro playing the superspy with a relaxed twinkle in his eye. He and Jean Reno have such great chemistry together you wish they’d made three or four more of these. – One Heat Minute, 03/26/2024
“A bizarre vanity project for Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, this baffling, tacky simulacrum of a prestige picture only makes sense as a bid for garden party respectability from the purveyor of Dr. Pimple Popper and MILF Manor. The Alto Knights is an almost unfathomably boring movie, so inert it feels like the film itself has achieved senescence.” – North Shore Movies, 03/21/2025
”With the possible exception of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the most exciting film released in 1981 was about two men having dinner. A continents-spanning epic set almost entirely within a stuffy restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, it’s entirely sui generis, the craziest idea for a movie you’ve ever heard and the unlikeliest sleeper hit of all time.” – Crooked Marquee, 03/21/2025
It was my great pleasure to host a panel with the young filmmakers selected for WBUR CitySpace’s Ones To Watch Short Film Festival. Here’s a chat about budgets, scheduling, sunlight and assorted other logistical nightmares with the talented Maria Servellón, Shaun Clarke, Sean Temple, Sarah Wisner, Brittany Severance and Herman Servatius. – WBUR CitySpace, 03/19/2025
“The self-described ‘sensory bacchanalia from beyond the mainstream’ takes over the Brattle Theatre for five days of movie mayhem. This year’s BUFF lineup offers another smorgasbord of outré delights, stomach-churning horrors, celebrity guests and celebrations of bad taste. As always, the festival prides itself on pushing the limits of propriety with panache.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/17/2025
”It’s the best baseball movie since Bull Durham — or maybe Bad Lieutenant — because it explores this sport’s peculiar ability to bend and distort time. As the shadows on Soldiers Field get longer, an elegiac ache settles in. Eephus is more than a movie about a game, it’s about reaching a time in your life when it feels like it’s getting late earlier and earlier.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/13/2025
”A droll marriage comedy disguised as an espionage thriller, making clever and sometimes fiendishly funny use of Blanchett’s glamourpuss opacity. Good heavens, can she wear these clothes. Black Bag plays to Soderbergh’s strengths: it’s a classy, jazzy, clockwork contraption full of intricate plot machinery and great-looking movie stars doing movie star shit.” – North Shore Movies, 03/13/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 