“This probably sounds like common sense, but it really is amazing what a difference it makes when you put the scene that starts the story at the beginning of the movie. Coppola’s revelatory revision of his saga’s final chapter feels like a far more focused and purposeful film, even if there are some things that can’t be fixed in an editing room.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/07/2020

“There’s really no possible way to overstate how alienating and bizarre the opening ten minutes of this program are, just watching the Wookiees putter around and moan. It’s so anti-entertaining as to border on the avant-garde. Carrie Fisher claimed she had one of the only extant original copies and used to put it on at parties, when she wanted people to leave.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/16/2020

“The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Virtual Screening Room has just started streaming a new 4K restoration of Federico Fellini’s 1954 masterpiece. One of the greatest of all films, this haunting, heartfelt fable feels like a balm during these troubled times, its essential, insistent humanity arriving as a reminder right when we need it most.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/03/2020

“AMC might be talking a big game right now about their new Clorox procedures, but darn near every time I’ve been to one of their cinemas I spend half the movie in the lobby trying to tell somebody what’s wrong with the picture or sound. If they’re as serious about safety as they are about presentation, we’ll all be dead before anyone can spoil the surprise twists in Tenet.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/19/2020

“I’ve had no hankering to rewatch Cast Away for the same reasons you won’t catch me taking another look at Contagion. Yet this grim week I found myself drawn to two stark, cinematic portraits of isolation. Gus Van Sant’s Last Days and Robert Altman’s Secret Honor are fictionalized riffs on famous figures, speculating about their darkest hours at home, alone.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/29/2020

“The Night of the Hunter’s high contrast black-and-white imagery is a deliberate throwback to silent film expressionism, while the tacky day-glo colors of Freeway are straight from tabloid television. The films have seemingly opposite aspirations, yet both are stories about a child’s ability to abide and endure, especially when the wolves are at the door.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/22/2020

“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