“The world of David Mamet is divided between hustlers and marks. You’re either playing an angle or you’re being played. Henry Johnson could be the playwright’s bluntest expression of these themes yet, one of those late period works in which artists of a certain age stop smuggling their ideas underneath the drama and just come out and say what they mean.” – North Shore Movies, 05/08/2025

”Calling it the best Marvel movie in years isn’t saying much, but it’s something. Thunderbolts* reminds us that the reason those early MCU adventures caught on was not because of special effects or intergalactic lore, but because they were workplace comedies about characters we enjoyed spending time with. Modest charms are nonetheless charming.” – North Shore Movies, 05/05/2025

”Palaud exhibits no interest whatsoever in her subject’s accomplishments, skipping immediately ahead to the drudgery of her heroin addiction. The indictments of boorish behavior by men in the film industry are indeed apt, but what’s ironic is that by refusing to see Schneider as an artist, the movie is guilty of some of the same sins as the director it tries to demonize.” – North Shore Movies, 05/05/2025

”There are ideas here about cultural appropriation being a form of vampirism, also a tantalizing angle about Blacks and the Irish sharing a history of oppression, plus some bracingly heretical notions about Christianity. Just as Sinners never exclusively belongs to a single genre, it’s also never about just one thing. The movie is too wildly ambitious and overstuffed for that.” – North Shore Movies, 04/17/2025

“The film follows Young hitting the Pacific Coast Highway for a tour of outdoor venues in 2023. It’s a lot of iPhone and GoPro footage of varying quality, with an easygoing emphasis on the downtime between gigs. The mellowest of hangout movies, there’s a laid-back charm to the picture and I found myself admiring its cozy willingness to be boring.” – North Shore Movies, 04/16/2025

“Recent events seem intent on reminding us that we’re never quite as far along as we think we are, so Lee’s beloved farce gets a thoughtful 2025 makeover from director Andrew Ahn, who finds a few fresh angles on the old story while mining the material more for melodrama than comedy. It’s a warm-hearted movie that probably could have used a few more laughs.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/16/2025

“Based on Mendoza’s actual experiences in Ramadi, it’s a real-time chronicle of U.S. Navy SEALs attempting to extract a wounded soldier from a house under siege that’s so stripped of any drama or editorializing sometimes it barely feels like a movie. I will concede that Warfare is a technically impressive achievement. But good God, y’all. What is it good for?” – North Shore Movies, 04/11/2025

”This revelation carries The Friend past a few false endings, and it’s the smartest thing about the film’s refusal to anthropomorphize Apollo. We may never be able to fully comprehend those we choose to share our lives with. In the end, people are as frustrating, complicated and essentially unknowable as another species altogether. But we can love them.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/03/2025

”Supposedly adapted from a novel by The Punisher writer Chuck Dixon, the screenplay by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone is an uncredited amalgam of Liam Neeson dad fantasies warmed over with sprinkles of Epstein QAnon seasoning and a lot of dolorous honor and duty stuff about the armed forces. It’s all pretty draggy, downcast and should have been a lot more fun.” – North Shore Movies, 03/27/2025