“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
”This was De Palma’s Godard era, shortly before he pledged allegiance to Alfred Hitchcock. But despite the blackout sketch structure and improv comedy hijinks, Hi Mom! is unmistakably a Brian De Palma picture: endlessly self-reflexive, obsessed with ways of watching and being watched, always implicating the audience in the action with a wicked cackle.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/11/2024
”The authors have taken over programming at the Brattle next week for a pair of double features presenting contrasting images of trans characters. Maclay explained, ‘We wanted the audience to see these films reflected off of one another. By putting them together, you get a full scope of the trans film image we’ve been positing with our book.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/03/2024
“Clocks are everywhere in Rumble Fish, looming large and small over the proceedings. The time-lapse shots of whizzing clouds that begin the picture return with a vengeance throughout, speeding their way through windowpane reflections to remind us just how quickly the world is passing these characters by, and that time is running out for Rusty James.” – Crooked Marquee, 09/20/2024
”A fascinating hybrid of stage and screen. Despite some striking, classically Frankenheimer compositions, it’s always very much a recording of a theatrical performance. At no point does it feel like you’re watching an actual quote-unquote movie. But you are watching The Iceman Cometh starring Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan, and that’s sure as hell something.” – Crooked Marquee, 09/13/2024
”The manic, channel-surfing structure of the thirty-year-old film mirrors modern attention spans, with tacky advertising and proto-reality TV talk show freak-fests intruding on a conspiracy of corporate malfeasance. To watch Fresh Kill today is to realize that the more things have changed, the more they’ve stayed the same. And not in a good way.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/11/2024
”With her gangly, akimbo limbs and wide, anime-character eyes, Duvall didn’t look like other leading ladies of the era. Or really any era, for that matter. Yet there was something mesmerizing about her. Even in the dizziest comedies she had an ethereal, melancholy quality that drew the viewer in. Shelley Duvall wasn’t just a great actress. She was transplendent.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/27/2024
“The hit muscial was an unlikely career choice for Huston. In hiring the then-76-year-old director, Stark said he was hoping to mimic the movie’s storyline, figuring the macho, larger-than-life brawler would be won over by the sweetness of his young charges. Indeed, it’s incredibly amusing to think of the elephant-hunting Huston surrounded on the set by singing little girls.” – Crooked Marquee, 08/23/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 