“Altman’s so-called heresy was actually a logical extension of Chandler’s vision of Marlowe as the last hurrah for chivalry in a fallen, postwar world that’s moved beyond moral concerns. Gould is grubby but gallant, a decent guy surrounded by sharks and betrayed for having faith in his fellow man. His best friend describes him as a born loser. He even loses his cat.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/29/2022

“The irony is not lost on our star-crossed couple that the primary ethnic rivalry is between Indians who have never been to India and African Americans who have never been to Africa. Family traditions are seen as both a blessing and a curse, providing much-needed support to minorities in an unwelcoming country while also keeping them walled off from each other.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/22/2022

“Lancaster was never more moving onscreen than when he was lying to himself, and there are shades of his shattering performance as John Cheever’s The Swimmer in Lou’s tall tales of his glory days. ‘You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean back then,’ he rhapsodizes, hilariously, as if even the sea were somehow now diminished like everything else.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/15/2022

“There’s no frame around the proceedings, nor any character introductions for the sake of the audience. We’re thrown into the action via a herky-jerky, 16mm handheld camera bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter around the performers in black-and-white, following their rapid mood swings from back-slapping bonhomie to chillingly sudden spurts of hostility.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/01/2022

“Given the increasingly likely possibility that it will not have another, one can’t really be blamed for wanting to celebrate America’s 246th birthday by getting lost. Luckily it’s a big country, and the Brattle Theatre has a dozen movies screening over the next ten days that rack up more interstate mileage than an entire season of Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/30/2022

“It’s the first non-musical directed by Garland’s then-beau and future husband Vincente Minnelli, who coordinates the teeming Times Square and bustling subway stations like choruses. His camera captures such a pulsating sense of big city life the film is commonly mistaken as being filmed on location, when in actuality it was all shot on the MGM lot.“ – Crooked Marquee, 06/17/2022

“It’s 51 minutes into Something Wild when Ray Liotta makes his entrance and knocks the entire film off its axis. This genial, sexy comedy has suddenly become incredibly scary, and the following hour’s nerve-racking, seasick sensations are almost entirely attributable to this up-and-coming young actor with the too-loud laugh and terrifying eyes.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/14/2022

“One of the filmmaker’s more pitiless efforts, it’s a brutal examination of transactional relationships that feels eerily prophetic today, as if he’d already seen the dire ends to which the 1980s would bring us. Most of the movie takes place in malls, hotels and other commercial settings, split into three chapters following three characters at various stages of selling out.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/10/2022

“He kept a cartoonist’s sensibility in his appreciation for exaggerated lines and curves, and as the later films grew more explicitly artificial, they came to look more and more like his drawings come to life. Fellini was fond of blaring music while shooting scenes, which is why characters always appear to be slightly swaying to the wistful waltzes of Nino Rota’s scores.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/09/2022

“Cronenberg has confessed that his 1979 gyno-nightmare was drawn from his own experiences in a bitter custody battle, the true-life traumas filtered through a heady mix of icky physiological anomalies and eruptions of entrails. It’s a rare peek at the private life of this intimidatingly intellectual filmmaker, whose work is always personal but seldom autobiographical.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/03/2022