“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

“Suffused with a twilight longing, the most moving moments for me are the film’s evening montages, whether it’s the sun going down to the sound of Jose Feliciano’s ‘California Dreamin’’ or the achingly lovely parade of neon signs clicking on at dusk as the Stones sing ‘Out Of Time.’ All good things will soon come to an end, probably sooner than you think.” – The Muriel Awards, 03/01/2020

“During production Kubrick flinched at the book’s downer ending, asking his co-writers to come up with a last-minute reprieve for these doomed men. But Douglas was having none of it, box office be damned. The closest thing we get to catharsis is the star’s spectacular pronunciation of the word ‘degenerate’ during a final, ineffectual rant.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/24/2020

”Filler like this only makes it hurt all the more that the Academy long ago shuttled their Lifetime Achievement Awards off to a separate, untelevised ceremony. Maybe you would like to see pioneering cinema legends like Wes Studi, David Lynch, and Lina Wertmuller receive honorary Oscars and learn a little about their lifes’ work? Too bad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/10/2020

“There’s something so deliciously rotten about Cats it makes you want to share the experience with others. ‘You know, the thing everyone forgets in this age of Netflix is that movies make temporary little communities of a few hundred people at a time,’ Judge enthuses. ‘And this strange little community is truly reveling in the cultural atrocity of Cats.’” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/23/2019