”The inchoate animosity against the Brat Pack that I feel like McCarthy is trying to pin down here was a resentment that the surplus of teen-focused entertainments in the 1980s signified Hollywood’s shift away from adult-oriented material. It goes without saying that nobody in the documentary dares to bring up the fact that most of these movies just weren’t very good.” – North Shore Movies, 06/14/2024

”Sennott is sensational, mapping out the fractured defense mechanisms of a person who’s only comfortable expressing herself through comedy and dark jokes, suddenly stuck in a situation that really isn’t funny anymore. In fact, she’s so good you’ll find herself getting angry at the movie for undercutting her work with the pointless jigsaw puzzle structure.” – North Shore Movies, 06/14/2024

”While it feels gross to discuss a young woman’s directorial debut with comparisons to her famous father, it appears that as far as handsomely shot hooey with a side of treacly humanism goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I kept wishing The Watchers had been more stylistically distinctive from her dad’s work, so I could feel like a better ally.” – North Shore Movies, 06/07/2024

”There are too many terrific actors in Ezra for the movie to be terrible, but that’s not for lack of trying. A cloying disability drama that feels like it was written two or three decades ago, it bounds from one queasy cliché to another like the most divorced dad fantasy ever. Thanks to the performers, this isn’t a difficult movie to watch, but it leaves an icky aftertaste.” – North Shore Movies, 05/31/2024

”Mortensen shuffles the chronology in initially confusing, continually frustrating ways. I assume he’s attempting to deconstruct certain tropes regarding rape and revenge in Hollywood movies, but in trying to take apart the story’s engine he’s removed it altogether. These are all well-played scenes, and they sit there inert because there’s nothing driving them into each other.” – North Shore Movies, 05/31/2024

”As the narrative screws start to tighten, I couldn’t help imagining what Steven Soderbergh might have made from this material. Still, Linklater has always been one of our most affable auteurs, and Hit Man is nothing if not likable. There’s a real warmth to the picture that makes you want to share it with friends. Too bad most folks will have to watch it at home alone.” – North Shore Movies, 05/24/2024

”Miller’s hotly anticipated prequel is a much stranger, more sorrowful picture than its predecessor, replacing Fury Road’s high-octane excitement with moodier meditations on scarcity and loss at the end of the world. It’s a very good, sometimes shatteringly powerful film that has the misfortune of following one of the greatest movies ever made.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/23/2024

”One of those post-Apatow comedies in which likable television personalities stand around ad-libbing and pulling faces over a promising premise that hasn’t been fleshed out into a story. Without looking it up, I’m guessing Babes probably premiered to easy-lay raves and some sort of ridiculous ovation at SXSW. I’m honestly shocked Kumail Nanjiani isn’t in it.” – North Shore Movies, 05/17/2024

”Granted, it’s still an exploitation picture. But it’s an uncommonly thoughtful and haunting one, bumping up against the limitations of the genre in fascinating ways. Too somber and meditative to thrill its target audience while a little too cheap and skanky to be the moody meditation Hornisher is shooting for, it’s curiously affecting all the same.” – North Shore Movies, 05/09/2024

”There’s something intentionally disjointed about the filmmaking. The camera angles are slightly obtuse and ambient sounds are mixed distractingly loud. Hamaguchi deliberately uses such disorienting cinematic devices to evoke the disharmony and inevitable imbalances in man’s relationship to nature. His scenic shots of the forest are hardly soothing.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/08/2024