“Looser and less self-important than it sounds in synopsis, Buck And The Preacher wears its historical import lightly, with an easy humor that confounded more than a few critics. By this point in his career, the Oscar-winning Poitier’s name had become synonymous with a certain sort of prestige picture starchier than this. It’s a film of simple, sturdy pleasures.” – Crooked Marquee, 08/19/2022

“But sometimes folks go to the movies just because we like to watch people fall in love, and the scorching chemistry between Swayze and Grey (who by all accounts didn’t care for each other’s company off-camera) is enough to crush petty plot concerns or any questions about how they could be dancing to instruments that haven’t been invented yet.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/18/2022

“E.T. is one of the purest and most emotionally direct of all American movies, with not a whit of adult condescension nor any self-protecting irony. Spielberg’s brilliantly subjective camerawork forces even the most jaded and cynical viewers back into the perspective of a child, which might be why it hits grown-ups so much harder than kids.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/11/2022

“An achingly beautiful cautionary tale about the blindness of privilege, a movie rich with longing and loss. It’s impossible to watch The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis in today’s political climate without feeling a chill every time the characters shrug off another sign of encroaching authoritarianism, blithely believing such horrors couldn’t possibly happen so close to home.” – Crooked Marquee, 08/05/2022

“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