”White Christmas really isn’t much of a Christmas movie. It’s more of a backstage musical with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as Broadway superstars putting together a benefit show while romancing a singing sister act played by Rosemary Clooney and the dazzling Vera-Ellen. They’re all awfully cute and it’s written in such a way that nobody has to try very hard.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/20/2024

“The ringmaster is a sweaty, corpulent wreck having paint-peeling, Strindbergian arguments with the voluptuous bareback rider Anne (Harriet Andersson) with whom he fled from his wife and children. Bergman was in the midst of an affair with Andersson at the time and his camera is positively in thrall to her fleshy sensuality and Bettie Page bangs.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/13/2024

”We both had pretty different ideas of what we wanted from cinema, but he taught me a way to engage with the world. Brudnoy actively sought out people with different perspectives and life experiences. I think that was part of why he loved going to the movies every day — meeting new characters, hearing new stories, always more opportunities to learn.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/09/2024

“Mitchum was 57 years old and he looked every minute of it; a shambling, still-handsome wreck whose trademark sleepy eyes were sinking deeper by the day. This isn’t the unflappable wiseass Bogart played in The Big Sleep, but rather an older, sadder guy who can’t help but do the right thing and always ends up with nothing to show for it but a broken heart.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/22/2024

“A monstrously funny middle finger of a movie that serves as a splenetic lean-in to pretty much every personal and professional criticism Allen has faced throughout his career. It’s a nasty picture, but feels liberating and fresh. Shaking off any semblance of decorum or need to be liked by the audience, the movie is unapologetic, even exhilarating in its rottenness.“ – Crooked Marquee, 11/14/2024

”The notorious and oft-banned 1976 debut of writer-director Catherine Breillat is gross, shocking and undeniably the work of a major artist, even when it feels like a work in progress. This fragmented, expressionistic coming-of-age tale depicts a young woman’s pubescence as a sticky, horned-up horrorshow of errant desires and bodily betrayals.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/08/2024

“You don’t have to be an armchair psychologist to see how such stories spoke to the fears of traumatized men returning from WWII to find women had become more independent in their absence. Much in the way that the superhero movie craze started shortly after 9/11, it’s an American coping mechanism to process our anxieties through pulp.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/07/2024

”Not even your most sophisticated home entertainment system can replicate the communal feeling of a whole room full of strangers shrieking and screaming at the same time. There are more than 40 frightening films showing at Boston area indie theaters over the 10 days between now and Halloween. Here are a handful of highlights.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/21/2024

“The world doesn’t want Norman to get well. Characters constantly taunt this sick man as if trying to bait him into living down to their worst expectations. By flipping our perspective to see one of film history’s most famous monsters as a tortured protagonist more sinned against than sinning, Psycho II asks us why we come to see movies like this in the first place.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/18/2024