Jen Johans’ latest physical media special edition gets Walter Chaw going about Walter Hill’s The Warriors, Bilge Ebiri on Terrence Malick’s Days Of Heaven, Nikki Dolson on William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours and somehow I wound up talking about Carlito’s Way with two of the world’s greatest living crime writers, William Boyle and S.A. Cosby. – Watch With Jen, 12/04/2023
“Both a dramatization of Orlando and a deconstruction of the text, the movie is a manifesto obsessed with tearing down boundaries in form and content. To Preciado, gender roles are ‘political fictions enforced by repetition and violence,’ which is why the film itself so flagrantly defies any genre categorizations. He’s trying to make a nonbinary movie.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/04/2023
“The movie takes place in 1946 and could have been made then as well, were it not for the astounding special effects that somehow manage to render the most detailed, photorealistic Godzilla I’ve ever seen in a movie… yet he still kind of lumbers around like a man in a suit with a load in his pants. This is a tricky needle to thread, and Yamazaki does so brilliantly.” – North Shore Movies, 12/01/2023
”Not every first-time filmmaker comes out of the gate with a stone cold masterpiece, but a surprising number have come pretty close. Debut features arrive in all shapes and sizes, as we can see from a wonderfully extensive retrospective running at the Coolidge Corner Theatre over the next few months in celebration of the venue’s upcoming expansion.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/01/2023
”I know I’m in the minority on this, but I find Carey Mulligan to be one of the biggest buzzkills in cinema, always scowling and bringing scenes down. The second hour of Maestro is a drag even before it becomes a cancer movie. This is one of those biopics where the storylines are all resolved with a half-hour to go, and then you sit there waiting for everyone to die.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2023
”Phoenix’s pouty performance is going to be controversial, with lines like ‘Destiny brought me to this lamb chop’ already breaking the internet. I think he’s a hoot, and Vanessa Kirby’s magnetically imperious Joesphine is every bit as delightful, constantly calling her husband’s bluffs in a randy, dom-sub relationship that’s practically a dirty comedy act.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2023
”A sumptuously photographed, pansexual sleaze-feast with a thing for mood lighting and bodily fluids. When the movie’s really cooking it plays like Pasolini’s Teorema by way of Cruel Intentions. This is all fine, disreputable fun until what might be the stupidest, most misguided ending I’ve seen since… well, since Fennell’s previous picture, Promising Young Woman.” – North Shore Movies, 11/21/2023
“America’s loss of innocence writ large – and I mean really large – The Deer Hunter is a work of such self-conscious, chest-thumping grandiosity that it’s easy to see why the film has fallen out of favor in some circles. Yet there’s something elemental about the movie’s boys’ adventure machismo, a primal force that overpowers Cimino’s more cartoonish flourishes.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/17/2023
”Haynes stages their scenes together with the two side-by-side, staring into mirrors, so we can better see Moore’s physicality bleeding into Portman’s. May December belongs to a rich tradition of great directors doing Persona riffs, like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Robert Altman’s 3 Women. But there’s more going on here than mimicry and homage.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/16/2023
”What’s so disappointing about Thanksgiving is that Roth has scrapped the sleazy, Reagan-era aesthetic of his original Grindhouse trailer and instead made an homage to a much lamer and tamer era of slasher movies. This is a crappy Scream knockoff with bad New England accents. It might as well be called I Know What You Did Last November.” – North Shore Movies, 11/16/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 