“Brattle regulars won’t be surprised to find Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions on the schedule. ‘A guilty pleasure of mine,’ admits creative director Ned Hinkle of the 1995 thriller starring Scott Bakula as a paranormal private eye. ‘It is kind of a silly movie but the magic in it is compelling and, since it’s a Clive Barker adaptation, the themes are surprisingly sinister.'” – Metro, 01/27/2017
“One of those movies that’s a lot of fun to watch without being particularly good, The Running Man is a chintzy-looking affair that gets by on stunt casting and a killer concept. Richard Dawson’s sly, self-mocking performance elevates the material, bringing the louche, creepy-uncle energy with which he leered at female contestants on Family Feud.” – Metro, 01/11/2017
“Ensuring I won’t get my shopping done until the last possible moment, this week The Brattle Theatre has three days of double features reeking of whiskey, cigarettes and mistletoe. If you prefer your holiday tidings laced with arias of profanity, inventive torture sequences and comically brutal gunfights, Santa’s got a lot of presents under the tree this year.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/20/2016
“Honestly, I’m so worn down by the negativity and tension of this election season that I jumped at the chance to poke a little fun at the whole thing. I realized that, clearly, these comments were going to grab the cultural zeitgeist and, since I had some open days around the election, I had the ability to throw something together very quickly.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/02/2016
“Given what we’ve learned about Nate Parker’s past and his treatment of women, what are we supposed to make of he and Celestin creating an entirely fictional scene in which Parker’s onscreen wife gets raped just so he can spend the rest of the movie nobly avenging her assault? C’mon, you don’t see Mel Gibson trying to play Oskar Schindler.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/12/2016
“In my experience, seeing a film you love in 70mm is akin to discovering it anew. So crisp and beautiful was the image in The Hateful Eight that I found it difficult to sit through other current movies with their sludgy digital distortions for weeks afterwards. It was like listening to a compressed MP3 on earbuds after attending a symphony orchestra.” – Boston Reel, 09/15/2016
“Point Blank is about as close as a mainstream narrative movie can get to not having a present tense. Elliptical and overlapping, Walker’s disconnected memories flicker across the picture and soundtrack, turning scenes into jigsaw puzzles for the audience to assemble as we go along. It’s like if Alain Resnais directed The Terminator.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/10/2016
“Robert Aldrich’s Hustle is a long, boozy slouch towards something like redemption, with Reynolds flashing faint flickers of disgust as he warily tries to navigate his way through a fallen world of venality and corruption. Old Hollywood movies are constantly blaring on television, as if taunting him with their glamorous tales of uncomplicated heroism.” – Boston Reel, 07/15/2016
“Writer-director Ryan Coogler remembers. Balboa’s back with the hat, the leather jacket and the bouncy ball, mumbling malapropisms to anyone within earshot. Rocky has endured for so long in the hearts of moviegoers because he’s a character completely lacking in guile, a fighter without a mean bone in his body.” – The Muriel Awards, 02/20/2016
“Middle finger aloft, De Palma cast the daughter (Melanie Griffith) of one of Hitchcock’s iconic blondes as a porn star and has the villain penetrating helpless women with a massive power drill held at crotch-level as the most unsubtle phallic symbol in the history of cinema. If you can get on its perverse wavelength the film is screamingly funny.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/05/2016
SPLICED PERSONALITY 