“A cautionary fable in which nature is dangerously out of balance. In synopsis it probably sounds pretty strident. But the movie never feels like a lecture because Alegría is a filmmaker far more interested in images than dialogue. There’s a mesmerizing rhythm to the picture, juxtaposing magic realist flights of fancy with an almost abstract, poetic sensibility.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
Category Archives: Reviews
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
“I like to say that I would watch Nicolas Cage in anything, and it often feels as if I do. Sympathy For The Devil is barely a movie. It’s a nothing-budget quickie Cage appears to have taken as a personal challenge, going bugfuck bonkers amid the somnambulistic surroundings to try and make something memorable by sheer force of will. He very nearly pulls it off.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
THE BEANIE BUBBLE
“The improbable billion-dollar boom surrounding those small stuffed animals is a fascinating, totally ‘90s tale of irrational exuberance and the rise of the internet. Unfortunately, this perfect storm of sociological circumstances scarcely interests the makers of The Beanie Bubble, a flaccid, grindingly one-note portrait of a craven CEO and the women he wronged.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
BARBENHEIMER
“However disparate in content and tone, Barbie and Oppenheimer are both distinctive visions from filmmakers who have a lot on their minds. You can wait all summer for a blockbuster that’s actually about something, and here come two on the same day. But I don’t recommend trying to do them as a double feature, no matter what Tom Cruise says.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/20/2023
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
“The irony should not be lost on anyone that the freshest movie in multiplexes right now is the seventh installment of a decades-old franchise based on a 1960s television program. But as its star reminded us last summer, ‘It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.’ The tireless Tom Cruise and company have outdone themselves again. This is a preposterously entertaining picture.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/14/2023
JOY RIDE
“Adele Lim’s gleefully vulgar directorial debut sends four friends on a raunchy road trip to China, toppling every prim and proper Asian stereotype along the way. Joy Ride is an awfully generic title, but I suppose it makes sense when you learn that Lim and co-screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong originally called it The Joy Fuck Club.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/06/2023
THE LESSON
“Delpy is so much fun as the left-field femme fatale that you can’t help but wish the film had pushed things even further. (Anyone who’s seen Hudson Hawk knows Richard E. Grant can go a lot higher than over-the-top.) It’s capably directed by TV vet Troughton, but what the screenplay needed was a baroque stylist to really lean into all the lurid trickery.” – North Shore Movies, 07/06/2023
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
“Almost nothing in the picture works. The action sequences are a smeary hodgepodge of poorly composited greenscreen effects and weightless, rubbery digital doubles being tossed around without consequence. There’s no snap to these scenes, none of the unexpected cause-and-effect punchlines that make the earlier movies so much fun to watch.“ – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/29/2023
NO HARD FEELINGS
“Gather ‘round kids, and let grandpa here tell you about these things called comedies. See, strangers used to congregate in theaters and laugh at the amusing situations in which movie stars found themselves. Most of these scenarios involved getting laid, or at least wanting to very badly. Alas, this desire has all but vanished from mainstream American cinema.” – North Shore Movies, 06/28/2023
ASTEROID CITY
“Asteroid City is an ingeniously constructed hall of mirrors that collapses in on itself like a house of cards, all the while asking big questions about the mysteries of the universe and the ways in which we use science and art to make sense of a cruel world we cannot understand. This is Wes Anderson’s most philosophical film, and one of his very best.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/23/2023









