“Here we go again with the grief. I feel like I just wrote this review a week ago for Fall but it bears repeating that not every survival movie needs to be a therapy session. When they inevitably remake Jaws in a few years it’s gonna be all about Brody coming to terms with some tragic nautical trauma in his past instead of just killing the shark because it eats people.” – North Shore Movies, 08/22/2022
“With a lush Pino Donaggio score referencing a whole history of sultry Italian thrillers, I think maybe the movie is trying to undercut erotic intrigue with chain restaurant banality. There’s so much dead air and aimless standing around I just assumed the project was an improvisational exercise, and was later aghast to learn that an actual screenplay had been written.” – North Shore Movies, 08/22/2022
“I suppose one could argue that Sara DeLappe’s tart, cruelly amusing screenplay is shooting fish in a barrel. But some of us have had it up to here with movies that are more like group hugs and the annoyingly popular insistence that art has to be somehow aspirational, so it’s refreshing when a film comes along that’s this content to be a bitch.” – North Shore Movies, 08/11/2022
“An intensely nerve-wracking experience for acrophobics like yours truly. Fall’s attempts at character-driven drama are fumbling at best, but it hardly matters because the situation is such a goddamn nightmare I watched the film curled up in the fetal position on my couch, palms sweating profusely and testicles ascended to somewhere above my sternum.” – North Shore Movies, 08/11/2022
“It’s a smart concept, stripping the series of its increasingly unwieldly sci-fi world-building and sending it satisfyingly back to basics for a breathless run through the woods, pitting the sophisticated alien weaponry against primitive bows-and-arrows and plucky human ingenuity. You also get to see the Predator fight a bear. Which is awesome.” – North Shore Movies, 08/06/2022
“If you don’t find sub-Tarantino schtick like professional killers discussing children’s television inherently hilarious this could end up being the longest ride of your life. In fact, if there’s a joke that doesn’t land for you in Bullet Train, you’d better learn to love it anyway, because it’s gonna get repeated ad infinitum over the next two hours and change.” – North Shore Movies, 08/05/2022
“As an uptight executive rocked by the re-appearance of her abusive former lover, Rebecca Hall gives a performance so ferocious and overdetermined I’m not surprised to hear it being hailed as a tour-de-force. The lanky British thespian is one of the hardest working actresses in showbiz, or maybe more accurately, one of the hardest acting actresses in show business.” – North Shore Movies, 08/05/2022
“A rock-solid example of old-fashioned Hollywood craftsmanship, Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives hums along with a brisk, all-business efficiency. The film takes its emotional temperature from the stiff-upper-lip professionalism of the rescue divers, with a brusque aversion to schmaltz that’s a surprise coming from this particular director.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/04/2022
”This storybook romance was messy from the start. People got hurt. The Last Movie Stars doesn’t skimp on the unsavory details – the fighting, philandering and drinking – but doesn’t dwell on them, either. One comes away with a sense of two difficult people who loved each other so much they eventually found a way to work it out, but it wasn’t easy.” – North Shore Movies, 07/27/2022
“A throwback to funny Friday night fright flicks like Tremors or Signs, Peele’s latest is an audience picture full of good, old-fashioned jump scares and blessed with an economy of scale. How refreshing to see a summer sci-fi blockbuster in which the fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance. It’s just a few colorful characters trying to not get eaten by a monster.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/20/2022
SPLICED PERSONALITY 