”A freaky-deaky film noir steeped in body horror and bodily fluids, it’s a sicko comic cross between the Coen brothers and David Cronenberg. Love Lies Bleeding starts out like one of those rural neo-noirs from the era in which it is set, lifting elements from Blood Simple and At Close Range before blossoming into something much stranger and all its own.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/14/2024

“There are six credited screenwriters on Peter Farrelly’s latest picture, as well at two more writers credited with the story. That’s a lot of paychecks for a script that feels like it was knocked out in an afternoon. As a critic who has expressed a preference for the filmmaker’s earlier, funnier movies, Ricky Stanicky serves as a reminder to be careful what you wish for.” – North Shore Movies, 03/08/2024

”And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time before I see another film as stubbornly soporific as Netflix’s dreary sci-fi drama Spaceman. There’s about 20 minutes of story here stretched out to nearly two hours, the movie idling alongside the spacecraft. This is the gloomiest, most humorless Sandler picture yet, and I’m including the one about 9/11.” – North Shore Movies, 02/29/2024

”A cavalcade of gags and stunts with the zany cartoon logic of Bugs and company at their best, flinging the characters around in antic set pieces that first defy the laws of physics then play them for unexpected payoffs. Shot in high contrast black-and-white, the movie has the undercranked aesthetic of an old-timey silent short revved up for TikTok attention spans.” – North Shore Movies, 02/29/2024

”Garrone’s Gomorrah was distinguished by a deeply researched examination of mob mechanics. He’s taken the same approach here, culling the screenplay from actual experiences of Senegalese migrants. What’s most horrifying is not the brutal desert crossing, but rather the vicious underground economy that has sprung up around these needy travelers.” – North Shore Movies, 02/23/2024

“Forensic auteurism may be a fool’s errand with collaborators as close as the Coens, nevertheless I think we now know which brother wrote the dildo joke in Burn After Reading. Drive-Away Dolls is a filthy, high-spirited farce that presumably sets some sort of record for the number of sex toys featured in a film released by a major studio subsidiary.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/22/2024

“It became a joke among my friends last year that nobody was surprised I loved a movie about an old-fashioned film enthusiast who listens to a lot of Lou Reed and reads paperback books in bars. (I don’t clean toilets for a living, but I did have to review Madame Web.) Still, it wasn’t so funny when Perfect Days was almost one of the last films this critic ever saw.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/21/2024

“A picaresque road trip through a country that has lost its common cause. And a lot of its common sense. This bracing, nervy comedy about our collapsing societal infrastructure follows a little girl lost in a post-MAGA America that’s a carnival of subcultures all siloed off from one another. It’s a place where everybody’s talking, but only to themselves.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/15/2024

“Garbage, reminiscent of the fly-by-night comic flicks companies like New Line used to crank out in the nineties. But honestly, I’d rather sit through one of these Sony B-movie bootlegs than another bloated, 165-minute Marvel epic that cost $200 million and wastes a cast full of Academy Award winners and then everyone gets mad if you don’t pretend like it’s a real movie.” – North Shore Movies, 02/15/2024

“A story of true love and fine cuisine, if not always in that order. It’s a film about fleeting pleasures to be savored in the moment, before they’re gone forever. The Taste Of Things is a sumptuous visual experience — you’ve never seen food photographed like this — following two lovers from the kitchen to the bedroom. But the kitchen is where the action happens.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/12/2024