“You keep worrying that the screenplay will resort to some dumb misunderstanding or try to gin up the stakes with one of them doing something stupid and ugly. But this is a movie about nice people in a tricky situation doing their best to be honest and kind, which is somehow so much more suspenseful than any hypothetical bodice-ripper.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/09/2023

“The first twenty minutes are extraordinary. The last twenty are infuriating. In between them sprawl another hundred minutes or so of swirling, kaleidoscopic adventure and some of the wildest animated visuals ever put to the big screen, albeit bogged down at times by some baffling storytelling choices. Caveat emptor: This is only half a movie.” – North Shore Movies, 06/06/2023

“The wily and surprising Sanctuary reminds me of independent films from an earlier era, back when stuff you’d see at Sundance wasn’t as concerned about sending the right social messages and instead got messy and mixed things up a little. This isn’t a dirty or explicit picture. If anything, it might be a little too tasteful in that regard. But it’s a fun film for grown-ups.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/01/2023

“Kids are expensive. 79-year-old Robert De Niro just had another one, his seventh. Alimonies aren’t cheap either, nor I imagine are property taxes when you own half the hotels and restaurants in lower Manhattan. What I’m saying is that the guy’s got serious overhead and About My Father is a painless enough way for a beloved actor to pay some bills.” – North Shore Movies, 05/26/2023

“Palladoro avoids the cathartic arguments that usually fuel this kind of family drama. Instead, he’s content to just be with these people, sitting alongside them and observing, mostly in moments of repose. At times, Monica feels like a movie made up of all the stuff other movies cut out. This unconventional approach yields unexpected rewards.” – North Shore Movies, 05/26/2023

“An accumulation of lived experience is felt over the film’s 147 minutes, eschewing melodrama in favor of meaningful gestures and knowing nods. But the repetitiveness of the Same Time, Next Year scenario becomes a bit of a chore as the characters enter into middle age. There’s some excellent filmmaking on display here. There’s also an awful lot of it.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/25/2023

“A deliberately outrageous provocation, Master Gardener seems designed to stir up the kind of social media discourse that will make you throw your phone into the ocean. But then, that’s always been this director’s deal. If Scorsese is cinema culture’s beloved grandpa, Schrader’s the irascible uncle who says amusingly inappropriate things during holiday dinners.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/18/2023

“A pretty good explainer as to why most things you buy now are crap, BlackBerry dramatizes the collapse of the once-ubiquitous handheld device as a cautionary tale of tech bro hubris and the inevitable consequences of a growth-at-all-costs mentality. Interestingly ambivalent and scabrously funny, it’s an inverted Social Network for also-rans.” – North Shore Movies, 05/16/2023

“The beauty of Blume’s book is that it tackles big issues without making a big deal out of them. Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig smartly preserves that sense of proportion, keeping the movie grounded in believable, day-to-day interactions and lived-in 1970s-era details. To Margaret, these events feel tumultuous. To us, they’re wonderfully ordinary.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/28/2023

“With testimonials from the likes of Molly Ringwald and Lena Dunham, the guest list skews female for obvious reasons. But the filmmakers miss out on what a game-changer Blume’s Then Again, Maybe I Won’t was for little boys who had been so ashamed of what they were doing under the covers at night. Not that I would know anything about that.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/28/2023