“There’s a perfectly lovely two-hander here about an elderly woman and a middle-aged man opening up to one another over the course of a daylong drive. The Proustian allusion in the title is entirely intentional, as this is very much a remembrance of things past. The problem is that the movie keeps pulling away from what’s so compelling about the present.” – North Shore Movies, 01/19/2024
Category Archives: Reviews
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE
”What’s grimly funny is how the character’s sensitive, do-gooder liberalism consistently backfires on her. Mrs. Nowak isn’t particularly subtle nor even incorrect about regarding her fellow teachers as fascists and thugs, yet she’s the one whose actions keep making a bad situation worse. What was that again about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions?” – North Shore Movies, 01/19/2024
THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY
”Most movies would saddle us with a monologue explaining the character’s journey and marking her personal growth, but director Morissa Maltz knows she doesn’t need a voice-over. She has Lily Gladstone. It’s captivating watching her watch people, allowing us the space to intuit what’s going on internally without blathering about it on the soundtrack.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/18/2024
THE BEEKEEPER
”These tech bro douchebags ride skateboards at work while drinking oat milk lattes, affectations that the film regards with visceral disgust. The 56-year-old Statham, in his battered pickup and mesh trucker hat, leans so hard into the generational antipathy it’s like a Death Wish movie, except instead of muggers he’s picking off trust fund kids who vape.” – North Shore Movies, 01/14/2024
MEAN GIRLS
“Not really a remake, nor even really a musical re-imagination of Tina Fey’s sleepover staple so much as it is a recitation. Pile into a packed auditorium and hear all (or at least most of) your favorite lines repeated by a new, less-illustrious cast under terrible television lighting. Occasionally they sing songs you will not be humming on the way home.” – North Shore Movies, 01/12/2024
THE ZONE OF INTEREST
”The film’s boldest and most effective stylistic gamble is that Glazer never goes inside the gates of Auschwitz. Screams and bursts of gunfire echo faintly in the distance, almost but not quite out of earshot. We can barely hear dogs barking and commands being shrieked, all while the Höss family goes about their dull, daily routines.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/11/2024
ANSELM
“Shot in stunning 6K resolution 3D by cinematographer Franz Lustig, it’s simply jaw-dropping to look at, bringing us into the massive installations and cavernous workshops of artist Anselm Kiefer. The sharp texture of these images takes your breath away, the objects seeming to float in front of us in the auditorium. You’ve never seen anything like this.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/05/2024
ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
“Both a dramatization of Orlando and a deconstruction of the text, the movie is a manifesto obsessed with tearing down boundaries in form and content. To Preciado, gender roles are ‘political fictions enforced by repetition and violence,’ which is why the film itself so flagrantly defies any genre categorizations. He’s trying to make a nonbinary movie.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/04/2023
GODZILLA MINUS ONE
“The movie takes place in 1946 and could have been made then as well, were it not for the astounding special effects that somehow manage to render the most detailed, photorealistic Godzilla I’ve ever seen in a movie… yet he still kind of lumbers around like a man in a suit with a load in his pants. This is a tricky needle to thread, and Yamazaki does so brilliantly.” – North Shore Movies, 12/01/2023
MAESTRO
”I know I’m in the minority on this, but I find Carey Mulligan to be one of the biggest buzzkills in cinema, always scowling and bringing scenes down. The second hour of Maestro is a drag even before it becomes a cancer movie. This is one of those biopics where the storylines are all resolved with a half-hour to go, and then you sit there waiting for everyone to die.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/21/2023









