“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

“Żuławski’s Possession is a singular cinematic experience and probably the greatest breakup movie ever made, in which all the roiling emotions are externalized and untethered from any recognizable reality. It’s the most unhinged thing I’ve ever seen, and that’s before she starts sneaking off to have graphic sex with a giant, slimy tentacle monster.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/11/2021

“Mitchum mastered a look of mild amusement at the machinations of the Western and noir plots that followed his characters around. He sometimes seemed like he’d already seen this movie before and was killing time until cocktail hour, unflappable in his commitment to effortlessness. The Rat Pack guys swaggered. Robert Mitchum sauntered.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/05/2021

“Earlier this summer, critic Gerry Peary was conducting a Facebook poll of the best American film noirs, asking colleagues for ranked ballots of their favorites. As I am apparently the only movie reviewer in the world who hates making lists, I was completely flummoxed by Professor Peary’s assignment and told him to just put Touch Of Evil down ten times.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/01/2021

“The Outlaw Josey Wales is the first of Eastwood’s directorial efforts to try and reconcile these two seemingly contradictory sides of its director’s personality: the snarling, reactionary avenger and the groovy, NorCal dude who digs foreign films and jazz. It’s a tension that animates all his most interesting work, and to this day remains unresolved.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/22/2021