“Hamaguchi has often cited Cassavates as an inspiration, which makes sense when you see the uptight etiquette as a Japanese equivalent to the American filmmaker’s backslapping bravado. They’re both false fronts that the movies take the time and care to peel away, revealing the roles we play and the emotions roiling underneath everyday life.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/13/2022
“Jessica Chastain’s pet project is practically a textbook example of the kind of film you find playing to empty theaters during the January doldrums, squandering a spectacular cast on a snoringly generic espionage thriller with shoddy production values and some surprise plot twists that can be seen from space. Luc Besson made this stuff all look so easy.” – North Shore Movies, 01/07/2022
“Youssef Chahine’s 1958 masterpiece comes to an ugly end with a train car grinding to a halt in front of a bloody altercation, the forces of forward progress literally stopped in their tracks by a culture’s psychosexual dysfunction. There’s nothing quaint or reassuring about Cairo Station. In fact, what might be most disturbing is that it hasn’t aged a day.” – Crooked Marquee, 01/07/2022
“While the great Iranian dramatist Asghar Farhadi’s Cannes Grand Prix winner isn’t exclusively about the internet, it uses social media as the motor for a characteristically complex examination of the ways in which we like to build people up in order to tear them down, and how situations are never as simple as they might appear on the surface.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/06/2022
“Moms aren’t supposed to have lives of their own. What makes Gyllenhall’s debut such a fascinating film is that it doesn’t try to explain away the central character or justify her petty resentments. She instead makes visceral the fears and shame of mothers who feel themselves unfit, and the guilt that comes with wanting to keep a little piece of your life to yourself.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/29/2021
“Due to the pandemic, the retrospective ran last December at the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Virtual Screening Room before being released as a Criterion Collection box set. But the good folks at the Brattle have brought it back to the big screen where it belongs, kicking off on Christmas Day with a 35mm print of Wong’s masterpiece, In The Mood For Love.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/23/2021
“In what will no doubt cause cardiac arrests for the social media hall monitors currently having conniptions over the age gap between the platonic lovers of Licorice Pizza, Baker’s film doesn’t just tell the story of a skeezy, fortysomething guy grooming and trying to turn out a teenage girl, it also dares to be amusing about it. Sometimes appallingly so.” – North Shore Movies, 12/23/2021
“No life lessons are learned and there’s no moral to the story that I can surmise, at least not beyond the deep appreciation of faded fads, forgotten pop songs and evenings that stretch out into the night with endless possibilities for adventure. It’s a thrilling movie to watch, hurtling forward with the headlong rush of two young people who can’t wait for their lives to begin.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/22/2021
“The most lovingly photographed of the Massachusetts locations is the Wakefield Bowladrome, where it has never stopped being 1978 and all the filmmakers had to do to make it period-specific was take down the ‘No Smoking’ signs. It’s also symptomatic of a certain carelessness on Clooney’s part. I mean, who ever heard of candlepin bowling on Long Island?” – North Shore Movies 12/20/2021
SPLICED PERSONALITY 