“It’s a film of quiet yearning and missed connections, about people who want to love each other but can’t seem to figure out how. Pokerfaced and exacting even by Jarmusch’s deadpan standards, this is one of those movies that’ll cause some viewers to complain that nothing happens, even though everything does. It all comes in under the radar.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/08/2026

“With his pockmarks, unibrow and sleazy little moustache, Timée seems to be actively trolling his teen idol persona, playing a fast-talking hustler who’s all guts and gumption, arrogantly convinced of his own greatness and almost entirely devoid of redeeming qualities. It’s the most appealing he’s ever been onscreen. I get the Chalamet thing now.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/23/2025

“Few actresses can light up the screen like Kate Hudson, which is easy to forget because she’s usually starring in garbage. She’s incandescent in Song Sung Blue, rocking mom jeans and a Midwestern accent, beaming beatifically through their duets. The movie soars on those songs, and they compensate for a couple of curious storytelling choices.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/23/2025

“Chaplin brings an unhinged physicality and unprecedented erotic heat to the previously chaste planet of Pandora. We’ve never seen anything in these pictures like what she’s doing here. For the first half of Fire And Ash, I was asking myself, ‘Do I finally like an Avatar movie?’ and perhaps more pressingly, ‘Am I getting turned on by a giant turquoise lady?’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/19/2025

“A clever little mousetrap of setups and misdirection, with some twists I didn’t see coming because I’m either too dumb or just punchy from serious movie season. It’s a knowing throwback to one of those trashy domestic invasion thrillers that were all the rage back in the 1990s, except this time we can never be sure whose hand is rocking the cradle.” – North Shore Movies, 12/19/2025

“Nobody in this movie seems to be reacting to what the other person is saying, and the things they say do not correspond with their behavior. Some of these conversations are so strange they border on outsider art. I’ve seen more than one person claim that while watching Ella McCay they worried there might be a gas leak in the theater. The whole film feels concussed.” – North Shore Movies, 12/12/2025

“We get a child’s eye view of this confusing, adult world, and a messy family melodrama only partially understood by our pint-sized protagonist. The unintended consequences of the old man’s superstitions are an echo of all the movie’s intergenerational squabbles, set against a bustling backdrop where tradition and modernity elbow each other for dominance.” – North Shore Movies, 11/27/2025

“The child’s demise is staged with semi-pornographic vigor by Zhao in a way that makes the death scene from E.T. seem subtle and restrained. Buckley puts on such a clinic of guttural screams and heaving, mucus-soaked sobs she’s guaranteed as many golden statuettes as will fit on her mantlepiece when awards season is over next spring.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/25/2025

“Jay Kelly wants to be Wild Strawberries, but it’s more like Mr. Holland’s Opus. The mind reels at how the director of prickly films like Greenberg could make something this soft and bathetic, gently teasing Jay’s self-absorption while also indulging it to an eye-rolling degree. Does anybody involved have any idea how off-putting and unrelatable this is?” – North Shore Movies, 11/24/2025

“This is where the movie’s strange alchemy takes place, in the mundanity of the grunt work and phone calls — so many phone calls — in the spaces between the books and exhibitions and things we think constitute a brilliant career. That’s where life happens. That’s where the time goes. Days like this and the next day, one after another until there aren’t any more.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/20/2025