“Loren commands the screen with the same leonine ferocity she brought to De Sica’s Two Women some sixty years ago. The tough old broad and the crafty street urchin is a mismatch as old as movies themselves, and the pleasures of the film lie in how confidently it embraces these timeless tropes with just a few tweaks to bring the story into the present day.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/13/2020
Author Archives: Sean Burns
POSSESSOR
“Cronenberg’s relentlessly gnarly thriller comes with a pulverizing soundscape of echoes and screams. Slicker and less cerebral than his father’s work, the film nonetheless contains familiar fixations on the loss of identity when technology merges with the new flesh, as well as an ick factor through the roof. In other words, the kid’s a chip off the old block.” – North Shore Movies, 11/13/2020
ELECTION DAY ESCAPE: LA STRADA AT THE COOLIDGE
“The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Virtual Screening Room has just started streaming a new 4K restoration of Federico Fellini’s 1954 masterpiece. One of the greatest of all films, this haunting, heartfelt fable feels like a balm during these troubled times, its essential, insistent humanity arriving as a reminder right when we need it most.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/03/2020
WHITE NOISE
“White Noise trusts the viewer enough to treat us like adults who can see for ourselves the vast emptiness in the lives of these people, their intense need for the validation of strangers and how desperately they cling to the notion of birthright superiority because they have no other ideas or accomplishments of which to speak.” – North Shore Movies, 10/31/2020
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S LETTER TO YOU
“Like Western Stars, the film was shot at Springsteen’s ranch in New Jersey by director Thom Zimny, alternating excellent performance footage in Bruce’s home studio with slightly gaseous oratory as the camera caresses his property’s exteriors. I’m not sure I’d quite call it ‘a movie,’ but this is one of the more soulful promotional items you’ll come across.” – North Shore Movies, 10/31/2020
IFFBOSTON FALL FOCUS 2020
“The Fall Focus kicks off with Minari, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s a wonderful, warm-hearted movie about a Korean family that moves to the outskirts of rural Arkansas in pursuit of the American dream. ‘This was one of my favorite films at Sundance, which feels like 12 years ago,’ Campbell enthuses.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/27/2020
ON THE ROCKS
“Coppola has perhaps too dreamy a disposition for the snap of screwball comedy, allowing space to study the ripples a teardrop makes in a half-empty martini glass. On The Rocks is a beguilingly personal picture, with the First Daughter of American cinema making a movie about a woman trying to find her own light in the shadow of a larger-than-life dad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/22/2020
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
“The perfect movie for a country sickened by plague and politics, it finds our disgraced reporter stumbling undercover around CPAC, synagogues and anti-mask rallies. Unspeakably gross and containing something sure to offend just about everybody, it’s also sort of sweet. Schmaltzy, even. Or at least as schmaltzy as a Baron Cohen movie can be.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/21/2020
CARY GRANT: A BRILLIANT DISGUISE
“What’s endlessly confirmed is that he was a hilarious cheapskate, charging friends to use the telephone at his home and taking care to save not just the buttons from his old, discarded shirts but also the rubber bands wrapped around his morning newspapers. With two Rolls-Royces stashed in separate cities, Cary Grant still clipped coupons.” – North Shore Movies, 10/20/2020
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
“It’s a story perfectly suited for Sorkin, a screenwriter who specializes in soaring, self-righteous speeches by quippy idealists who love being smarter than you. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is his best script since The Social Network, chockablock with hyperliterate zingers and groovy grandstanding. Nobody really talks this way but we all wish we did.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/15/2020









