“Altman’s California Split and Bogdanovich’s Saint Jack have long dwelled in the back alleys of their directors’ filmographies, movies more written about than seen, boasting an ardent band of acolytes. In a way this seems somehow appropriate, as they’re modestly scaled pictures about men living on the margins, hustlers scraping by from score to score.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/15/2020

“Too square to be critical favorites and too modest to make much of a ruckus otherwise, Danny Collins and Ricki And The Flash are wistfully funny movies about taking your last chance to fix what’s broken in the rearview, featuring deliciously oversized star turns by two of our finest. There were better films I saw that year but few I’ve returned to as often.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/08/2020

“Both movies are preoccupied with the mysteries of marriage and infidelity, exploring the unpredictable desires of men and women. They’re films from a pre-franchise era when such subjects were deemed worthy of serious, big-screen consideration. They’re also from a time when if people went to a subtitled movie, they expected to see a little skin.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/01/2020

“Shanley’s night sky needs to appear larger than life to us because Joe’s seeing it as if for the very first time, the same way Hertzfeldt’s Bill looks at those dust mites or his brilliant bathmats. These are things I try to remember while I’m out taking my walks and trying to beat back my own brain clouds, especially on such a beautiful day.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/24/2020

“Dirty jokes have a way of knocking down doors for students, and for this particular class clown, the Porter’s speech about alcohol provoking desire while taking away performance was key to my understanding that the plays of William Shakespeare were never meant to be musty objects of study, but rather broad, bawdy entertainments for mass audiences.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/17/2020

“So much of America’s idea of itself comes from the mythology of the open road. Ever the transcendentalist, Lynch sees the interstate as a sprawling symbol of humanity’s interconnectedness, a place to reach out and renew. The more embittered Eastwood is focused on highways that don’t lead anywhere, places where we can run but cannot hide.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/09/2020

“I thought we might keep the nocturnal vibe going by choosing two Scorsese movies that actually take place after midnight. 1985’s giddy, exasperating After Hours is an anomaly in the director’s canon in that it’s an out-and-out comedy, albeit an extremely nervous one, while 1999’s Bringing Out The Dead is one of the filmmaker’s most underappreciated works.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/03/2020

“King Of New York is a rotgut update of 1930s gangster movie tropes, while The Comfort Of Strangers is a lush literary adaptation drenched in Euro-arthouse perversity. What the pictures have in common are knockout lead performances by Walken, leaning into his outré eccentricities like he’s just arrived from outer space. You can’t take your eyes off him.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/27/2020

“Reichardt movies are immersive experiences, inviting you to settle in and let your metabolism power down to their pace. These are films of loaded glances and pregnant pauses, where even the slightest gestures become seismic. The stories are told in the spaces between the dialogue. Everything’s happening when it seems like nothing’s going on.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/05/2020

“This 1982 romantic drama was independently bankrolled by a wealthy Louisiana family of mortuary owners and made with an all-black cast and crew, most of them working in their positions for the first time. It’s a vital artifact from a lost part of film history, a tantalizing glimpse of a nascent black independent cinema movement that almost was.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/03/2020