”The story takes place almost entirely on Murphy’s face, swimming in the infinite sadness of those ice blue eyes. The movie is hushed and has the damp chill of Irish winters. Delicate in its observations and devoid of histrionics, Small Things Like These is pretty much exactly the opposite of the kind of project you’d expect an actor to produce after winning an Oscar.” – North Shore Movies, 11/08/2024

“It’s a classy crowd-pleaser, deftly executed with the no-frills finesse that’s been the Eastwood brand for as long as I’ve been going to the movies. Juror #2 was obviously shot on a budget, with sets that look like they went up yesterday, but it’s got the kind of clean, clear storytelling beats that have become a lost art in contemporary Hollywood.” – North Shore Movies, 11/01/2024

”You might be wondering how all these disparate elements and clashing tones could possibly work together. The answer is about as well as you think. One watches Emilia Pérez the way you’d stare at a duck-billed platypus or one of those exotic animals made up of mismatched parts that Robin Williams cited as proof that God gets stoned.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/31/2024

”That is one nutty Vatican. But in retrospect, the rave reviews for Conclave are hardly a surprise. Being sequestered with a bunch of cantankerous celibates who dislike each other while trying to settle on the least objectionable option for everybody will be an extremely relatable experience for anyone who has ever voted in a film critics society meeting.” – North Shore Movies, 10/25/2024

”Hagiographic in a way that starts to feel unseemly, full of self-consciously mythic shots of Bruce backlit and slowly ascending stairwells and such while friends and colleagues tell us how great he is. More than once it reminded me of those old ‘Legends of Springsteen’ sketches on The Ben Stiller Show. Surely they could have done better than this.” – North Shore Movies, 10/25/2024

”Sean Baker’s Anora is the best American film of the year so far. It’s also the funniest — a soaring, generous comedy about transactional relationships and the class divide. What starts as a Cinderella story in stiletto heels becomes a bawdy, up-all-night farce. With her crack comic timing and air raid siren of a voice, Madison is like Jean Arthur in a thong.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/24/2024

“A breathless sprint of ‘print the legend’ falsifications, harmless fibs and outright smears. That Reitman would resort to shitting on actual mavericks George Carlin and Jim Henson while spit-shining the legend of a middlebrow mogul like Lorne Michaels should be no surprise coming from modern cinema’s most obsequious company man. He’s a natural born suit.” – North Shore Movies, 10/12/2024

”One can admire aspects of Abbasi’s film while wondering who exactly it’s supposed to be for. Trump’s supporters don’t want to see him portrayed this way, while the rest of us have grown so incredibly sick and tired of this man who has occupied such an outsized space in our daily lives for nearly a decade, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go see a movie about him.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/10/2024

”A pointed rebuke to whatever enjoyment audiences may have gotten out of the first film, Folie à Deux feels punitive, not to mention like a perverse waste of resources. Why hire Lady Gaga if you’re not going to let her belt the songs out? I guess for the same reason that they used IMAX cameras to shoot a movie that takes place in like three dingy rooms.” – North Shore Movies, 10/02/2024

”Coppola’s dream project is a grandiose, go-for-broke folly, the last gamble of an 85-year-old legend pushing all his chips into the middle of the table. Every scene shows you something you’ve never seen before in a way you’ve never seen it. The film’s flaws are obvious, plentiful and did not bother me in the slightest. An hour after it ended I was still smiling.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/26/2024