“Traveling across a highly stylized, egalitarian America full of loveable weirdos and eccentrics, our hero befriends escaped convicts, toothless hobos, ghost truckers, biker dudes and a diner waitress who dreams of moving to Paris. In its openhearted embrace of misfits on the margins, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is basically a John Waters movie for kids.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/14/2023
“It’s a potential parent’s worst-case nightmare of an ugly, unlovable time-suck taking over your life and the sleep-deprived psychosis of a purgatorial existence with a sick, disgusting child that Will. Not. Stop. Crying. Basically, if you’ve ever had a panic attack worrying that you might have knocked up your girlfriend, this is the movie playing in your head.” – Crooked Marquee, 08/04/2023
“A manhunt movie suffused with melancholy longing for past glories in the face of a morose, mundane present. Disguised as a film noir, it’s actually a precursor to the early 1960s British kitchen sink dramas, one crime plot away from This Sporting Life or Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. I’m guessing this was an important film for a young Mike Leigh.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/28/2023
“Released a year after The Bad News Bears, Slap Shot comes from a cultural moment when foul-mouthed sports comedies were how America explained itself to itself. It’s no coincidence that the opening credits unspool over Old Glory, and the country depicted is at a dead end. What else is left to do but get out there on the ice and goon it up for the crowd?” – Crooked Marquee, 07/21/2023
“However disparate in content and tone, Barbie and Oppenheimer are both distinctive visions from filmmakers who have a lot on their minds. You can wait all summer for a blockbuster that’s actually about something, and here come two on the same day. But I don’t recommend trying to do them as a double feature, no matter what Tom Cruise says.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/20/2023
“Allen might be the only primary creative force of the 1970s New Hollywood movement who never became a household name. Hagiographies of that era tend to trend toward blowhard, masculine director types, but it was this prim and proper female cutter who redefined the shapes and sounds of the most fertile decade in American cinema.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/18/2023
“Look beyond the big chains and you’ll find a few precious, old-fashioned independent movie houses committed to bringing the best contemporary art cinema and popcorn entertainment to the community. It’s a thriving scene full of fun repertory programming and more film festivals than one person could possibly have enough time to attend. We’ve tried.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/30/2023
“The key to Hackman’s genius is that he was always one of our most vulnerable actors. Beneath that gruff, macho bluster lurks an almost child-like sensitivity. He bruises so easily. Screenwriter Sharp’s dialogue is the gold standard of exhausted, Watergate-era fatalism. Few films embody a gloriously bummed-out era of American cinema better than Night Moves.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/30/2023
“I’m not sure any actor has flown closer to the sun than Brando did here. The more powerfully Paul attempts to assert himself, the more pathetic he becomes. The star goes to emotional places so vulnerable and humiliating other performers spend their entire careers never getting near the same neighborhood. She’s naked, he’s exposed.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/16/2023
“Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Party Girl and Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation didn’t drum up much money at the box office during their initial releases, but both became almost instant cult classics that epitomized a very specific moment of Gen X cool. During my undergrad days as a video store clerk, we couldn’t keep these tapes on the shelves.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/16/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 