“This was an important afternoon for me, as a kid obsessed with the latest Star Wars and Spielberg pictures realized that old black-and-white movies could also be a blast. I had so much fun watching The Lady Vanishes that I put off seeing it again for another 40 years or so, fearing that the film couldn’t possibly live up to the thrill of that first discovery.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/25/2025

“Other directors tell stories. Robert Altman explored ecosystems. No filmmaker more playfully examined the hierarchies in which we humans like to arrange ourselves, every movie a bustling community that seemed more discovered than staged. Altman’s improv-heavy, overlapping dialogue and roving camera made his films feel caught on the fly.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/14/2025

“Beverly Hills Cop is an extremely easy film to watch, floating from scene to scene on the characters’ chemistry and Murphy’s incandescent charisma. The generic crime story makes it even cozier, with familiar beats that don’t take too much focus away from the people we’re enjoying. You can see why it was #1 at the box office for 14 weeks. The movie is good company.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/11/2025

“Poking merciless fun at the self-important music docs of the era, it’s a boomer hagiography in reverse. Reiner plays a documentarian tagging along for what looks like it will be the band’s final tour, downsizing from arenas to air force bases and amusement parks where they’re second billed to puppet shows. It’s the end of an error, the twilight of the dolts.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/02/2025

“A time capsule of two strutting young actors who were about to take over Hollywood, right before it didn’t quite happen. The film is a marvel of peacocking machismo, with two big, preening performances trying to top each other in every scene. When I was growing up The Pope Of Greenwich Village was everybody’s older brother’s favorite movie.”  – Crooked Marquee, 06/20/2025

“I can’t imagine what seeing The Mortal Storm must have been like for audiences when it was first released, but I can tell you how unsettling it is now. Eighty-five years ago it might have been distracting to watch Hollywood stars playing Germans who slip into authoritarianism. Today their American accents just make the movie seem more sickeningly timely.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/13/2025

“Revisiting Dogma, we see an artist’s ambitions stretched beyond his abilities. The movie is a failure, but an honest one. It’s sad to watch today, knowing Smith would never again swing for the fences like this, spending the next 25 years catering to an undiscerning fanbase with reflexive indolence, turning his own laziness and incompetence into part of the joke.” – North Shore Movies, 06/05/2025

“There’s not much to Thompson’s play beyond folksy wisecracks and pat affirmations. But director Mark Rydell’s big-screen version boasts an alchemical element which makes On Golden Pond far more than the sum of its treacly parts. The leads aren’t just movie stars, they’re movie legends. It’s twilight for the Thayers, and for an entire era of Hollywood.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/23/2025

“’Somehow in the screwed up world in which we find ourselves, a ghastly amount of people have lost sight of the fact that these are the bad guys,’ says the Somerville Theatre’s Ian Judge. ‘This narrative cannot be allowed to be blurred by modern day losers stoking the flames of antisemitism and fascism. These movies help us remember who we are at our best.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/15/2025

”He was so much taller and blonder and better-looking than everyone around him, like some sort of storybook Nordic prince. But taking another look at the films in the Brattle retrospective, one comes away with how much the actor loved to undercut his matinee idol appearance. Kilmer may have looked like a golden god, but he was often a very silly goose.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/12/2025