“Writer-director Louis Malle’s semi-autobiographical 1971 masterpiece looks affectionately askance at a waning aristocracy and a way of life without consequences as a young man comes of age. It’s an enormously entertaining picture, presumably the gentlest and most endearing movie ever made about a boy who has sex with his mother.” – Crooked Marquee, 02/04/2022

“I suppose you could stream it. But you know how some movies need to be seen on a big screen? The Conversation needs to be heard in an auditorium on the kind of equipment you don’t have at home. It’s an intricately constructed aural experience about the act of listening, and how sometimes our perceptions of sounds are shaped by what we want to hear.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/02/2022

“The early films presented in the HFA series betray little of the bitter gorehound Mou would become. 1969’s I Didn’t Dare Tell You and 1970’s The End Of The Track are gentle, humanist portraits of young people struggling to get by in an uneasy time of economic inequality, reminiscent of the Italian neorealists in their depiction of everyday life.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/26/2022

“Wilder’s most bracingly unlikeable film since his muckraking 1951 masterpiece Ace in the Hole, which died a similar box office death. It’s a curiously powerful picture, pushing up against the era’s mores and sexual politics in productively uncomfortable ways. You get the sense that the director is not always in control of his material, and that’s why the movie leaves a mark.” – Crooked Marquee, 01/21/2022

“Youssef Chahine’s 1958 masterpiece comes to an ugly end with a train car grinding to a halt in front of a bloody altercation, the forces of forward progress literally stopped in their tracks by a culture’s psychosexual dysfunction. There’s nothing quaint or reassuring about Cairo Station. In fact, what might be most disturbing is that it hasn’t aged a day.” – Crooked Marquee, 01/07/2022

“Due to the pandemic, the retrospective ran last December at the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Virtual Screening Room before being released as a Criterion Collection box set. But the good folks at the Brattle have brought it back to the big screen where it belongs, kicking off on Christmas Day with a 35mm print of Wong’s masterpiece, In The Mood For Love.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/23/2021

“You have to get dinged around a bit by life before you can make a movie like Fat City, a film that dwells in disappointment without making a big deal about it. The picture drifts in and out of the characters’ days with little in the way of momentum and would probably feel as purposeless as these people’s lives, were it not for Huston’s amiable eye.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/17/2021

“Some people like to claim Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie, even though it takes place at a Christmas party on Christmas Eve and prominently features sleigh bells and Christmas carols on the soundtrack. But even if you don’t want to call Die Hard a Christmas movie, I consider it a holiday gift. After umpteen viewings, the movie still makes me a jolly, happy soul.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/16/2021

“The series is an indulgence, admits the Brattle’s creative director Ned Hinkle. ‘I’m not too shy to say it is my 50th birthday this year and this is my gift to myself. When I think about movies that were formative for me or are special to me, it seems like a lot of them come from 1984, a year that gave us Buckaroo Banzai, Repo Man and Streets Of Fire,’ he smiles.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/08/2021

“Doc dismantles the Western limb-from-limb, trying to see how much nothing it can leave you with. I admire the effrontery of its anti-entertaining intentions while I can’t imagine a film I’d want to watch again less. It’s a sad, muted little movie in which people plod off to their inevitable ends, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral more like a massacre than any test of mettle. ” – Crooked Marquee, 11/19/2021