“It could easily have been a cautionary tale, but Walker has made something slipperier and a good deal sadder. She’s more interested in the aftermath, locking the camera onto McKenna-Bruce’s achingly expressive face as she dissociates on the dance floor. This is very much a cinematographer’s movie, evoking emotions through color and physical space.” – North Shore Movies, 02/09/2024

”Completed in 1971 but never released theatrically until now, David Schickele’s hybrid-documentary-slash-hangout-movie is a portrait of a place that was already gone by the time the film was finished. The movie drifts through semi-improvised dalliances and affairs, spending idle, languorous afternoons with San Francisco’s activist community.” – North Shore Movies, 02/09/2024

“The fun thing about Frederick Wiseman films is that during them I often find myself fascinated by subjects I normally couldn’t care less about, such as the brushing and temperature controlled bacterial cultivation of French cheese curds. (I don’t even like cheese.) It’s the attention and level of care that make this such a pleasurable way to spend four hours.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/08/2024

”This is confusing and distracting, yet oddly in keeping with the movie’s laborious dedication to prohibitively expensive reproductions of perfectly good things that already exist. Why bother with a real Beatles song or an actual shooting location when you can instead spend a fortune on a slightly unnerving digital simulacrum? I mean, look at that cat.” – North Shore Movies, 02/02/2024

”What’s unexpected, and undeniably amusing, is that these kids curse like sailors, spitting Scarface volumes of profanity on the field. This is presumably why The Underdoggs has gone straight to streaming, so underage viewers won’t have to worry about sneaking into an R-rated movie and can watch it as easily as they watch porn on their phones.” – North Shore Movies, 01/25/2024

”Supporting characters only exist to tell us how important Isabel Wilkerson is, how the world needs her work, and her voice. Even people on their deathbeds don’t get to talk about anything except how much this book is going to matter. The constant affirmations of the author’s ego aren’t just dramatically inert, they also overwhelm her ideas, sucking up all the screen time.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/25/2024

“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

”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

”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

”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