“Sora’s film is set at a Japanese private school in a very near future where society is waiting on tenterhooks for an earthquake that’s predicted to cause unprecedented devastation. In the meantime, boys will be boys, and the film follows two class clowns approaching graduation and growing apart. It’s like if Superbad took place on the eve of the apocalypse.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/02/2025
“Linda Linda Linda accumulates ephemeral grace notes and wry asides before blowing the doors off with a euphoric climax of pure punk rock elation, one of the happiest endings I’ve ever seen in a movie. I can still recall exactly where I was sitting at the Brattle that afternoon 20 years ago, because I was practically levitating out of my chair.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/02/2025
“Director Paul Greengrass turns the white-knuckle, true-life tale of a school bus lost amid the 2018 California wildfires into a laughable pile of Hollywood hokum. Co-scripted by Mare Of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby, The Lost Bus is full of the kind of horseshit screenwriters add to wax the egos of movie stars, and it does not reflect well on anyone involved.” – North Shore Movies, 09/28/2025
“So much of Ordinary People has been codified into pop culture cliché it can be difficult to imagine how startling the film must have seemed at the time. Here’s television’s original beloved housewife Mary Tyler Moore, who can turn the world on with her smile, playing one of the least maternal moms in movie history with brittle, shattering intensity.” – Crooked Marquee, 09/26/2025
“You can be a literal bomb-throwing radical and still wake up one morning to discover you’ve become a crabby old conservative. DiCaprio’s consternation is a howl, and sometimes this feels like a whole movie made out of that scene near the end of Hollywood when Leo’s Rick Dalton is screaming at the Manson family and slurping margaritas out of the blender.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/25/2025
“A fascinating peek behind the curtain, a look at filmmaking as it actually happens, and all the boredom and frustration that entails. The film was made with Coppola’s permission and is being released by his nephew Robert Schwartzman’s company Utopia, so I doubt the portrait is truly warts and all, but there are plenty of blemishes. I could have watched it all day.” – North Shore Movies, 09/22/2025
“First-time screenwriter Ben Shattuck adapted his short story himself, and the rookie mistake with The History Of Sound is that it’s entirely internalized. There’s nothing for Lionel to do. Such a passive protagonist is okay when we’re reading and are privy to the character’s inner thoughts, but onscreen we’re just watching a handsome man look sullen.” – North Shore Movies, 09/19/2025
“Stuff like McCartney praising them as musical geniuses undoes the verisimilitude that made the first film so special. It’s just being silly with celebrity guest stars. What made Spinal Tap achingly hilarious was the gap between the band’s grandiose posturing and their increasingly low-rent circumstances. You can’t pull off that joke when Sir Elton is fawning over you.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/12/2025
“The story of an entitled sociopath who puts a woman that loves him through hell while ruining her family’s holiday, except disguised as a twinkly-eyed romantic comedy about an adorable scamp who charms an uptight older lady into falling for his antics. It’s a pity party for a character that braver filmmakers would have had the nerve to tackle head on.” – North Shore Movies, 09/11/2025
“Jonsson is such a marvelous actor that his camaraderie with Hoffman elevates everything around them. These boys bantering and bonding on their journey can’t help but recall another King adaptation, Rob Reiner’s beloved Stand By Me. Except imagine a version of Stand By Me in which the kid from Jojo Rabbit gets his jaw blown off for walking too slow.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/09/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 