“Alastair has a habit of quoting Hamlet, which can’t help but recall Gibson’s own celebrated take on the melancholy Dane, here filtered through the regrets of a character fallen far from the heights of his profession due to demons and drink, working on a hacky project he can’t stand, reciting the gravedigger speech to a classroom of confused preschoolers.” – North Shore Movies, 02/04/2022

“Where Antonioni asked us to embrace the mystery, Franco’s film is about getting answers. Eventually, annoyingly and anticlimactically as possible. We discover that Roth’s relationship with Gainsbourg is not what we’d at first assumed, though the revelation carries next to no weight whatsoever. In fact, the more we learn, the less interesting Sundown becomes.” – North Shore Movies, 02/04/2022

“One of the more pointless examples of Hollywood’s fetish for IP strip-mining, this 26-years-later sequel to the winking ‘90s phenomenon surrounds a new cast with a few of your favorite old characters and basically re-enacts the original picture with enough nostalgic nods to give undiscerning viewers obsessed with their own childhoods quote-unquote all the feels.” – North Shore Movies, 01/14/2022

“At once an experiment and a retrenchment. After all, what is Shakespeare’s Macbeth but another of Coen’s beloved noirs? The Thane of Cawdor and his conniving bride commit a stupid crime and spend the rest of the picture compounding its consequences, trying to keep from getting caught as the corpses pile up around them. There are even two idiot hitmen.” – North Shore Movies, 01/14/2022

“Hamaguchi has often cited Cassavates as an inspiration, which makes sense when you see the uptight etiquette as a Japanese equivalent to the American filmmaker’s backslapping bravado. They’re both false fronts that the movies take the time and care to peel away, revealing the roles we play and the emotions roiling underneath everyday life.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/13/2022

“Jessica Chastain’s pet project is practically a textbook example of the kind of film you find playing to empty theaters during the January doldrums, squandering a spectacular cast on a snoringly generic espionage thriller with shoddy production values and some surprise plot twists that can be seen from space. Luc Besson made this stuff all look so easy.” – North Shore Movies, 01/07/2022

“While the great Iranian dramatist Asghar Farhadi’s Cannes Grand Prix winner isn’t exclusively about the internet, it uses social media as the motor for a characteristically complex examination of the ways in which we like to build people up in order to tear them down, and how situations are never as simple as they might appear on the surface.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/06/2022

“Moms aren’t supposed to have lives of their own. What makes Gyllenhall’s debut such a fascinating film is that it doesn’t try to explain away the central character or justify her petty resentments. She instead makes visceral the fears and shame of mothers who feel themselves unfit, and the guilt that comes with wanting to keep a little piece of your life to yourself.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/29/2021

“In what will no doubt cause cardiac arrests for the social media hall monitors currently having conniptions over the age gap between the platonic lovers of Licorice Pizza, Baker’s film doesn’t just tell the story of a skeezy, fortysomething guy grooming and trying to turn out a teenage girl, it also dares to be amusing about it. Sometimes appallingly so.” – North Shore Movies, 12/23/2021

“No life lessons are learned and there’s no moral to the story that I can surmise, at least not beyond the deep appreciation of faded fads, forgotten pop songs and evenings that stretch out into the night with endless possibilities for adventure. It’s a thrilling movie to watch, hurtling forward with the headlong rush of two young people who can’t wait for their lives to begin.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/22/2021