“Reichardt has been teaching film at Bard College since 2006, and her bone dry dismantling of macho heist picture fantasies got me and a friend imagining an instructor who’s had it up to here with the crime drama fixations of her young male students. Without knowing for sure, I’d be willing to guess that Kelly Reichardt has some pretty strong feelings about the movie Heat.” – North Shore Movies, 10/24/2025

“As enervating a movie experience as you’ll have this year. Cartoonishly reductive and crassly fictionalized in the manner of most formula Hollywood biopics, yet stubbornly absent any of the genre’s cheeseball satisfactions. It wears its joylessness as a point of pride, drowning in a dour self-importance that reflects poorly on both the filmmakers and their subject.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/23/2025

“Del Toro has always had more affinity for his monsters than men, and Elordi’s tender creature is so much more interesting than Isaac’s off-putting, one-note doctor that the movie doesn’t come alive until he does, which is unfortunately over an hour into the 149-minute feature. Frankenstein is as visually extravagant as it is dramatically undercooked.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/21/2025

“Luca Guadagnino’s entertainingly trashy provocation pushes the audience’s buttons with fat, clumsy thumbs, tackling issues of race, elitism, power dynamics and consent without having anything substantive or even coherent to say about any of them. Still, there’s a naughty, irresponsible swagger to the picture that’s undeniably fun to watch.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/15/2025

“Every scene in director Mary Bronstein’s sophomore effort is a mini-anxiety attack, rattling in extreme closeups on star Rose Byrne while a cacophonous world roars at and around her, shrieking reminders of her shortcomings as a mother and a human being. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You would probably be unwatchable if it weren’t so horrifically funny.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/15/2025

“Though it’s a major studio release with big stars, Roofman has the low-key vibe of an indie from the early aughts. The 35mm cinematography and easy authenticity make it feel like something you’d have seen at Sundance around the time when the film is set. Cianfrance has a real eye for everyday life. The places in his movies look like people actually live there.” – North Shore Movies, 10/10/2025

“Such a scenario could easily have tipped into melodrama, but Bigelow has too brusque and businesslike an approach for that. There are no histrionics here, just stray glimpses of humanity as these officials grasp the gravity of the situation. The movie is breathless, understated. A House Of Dynamite leaves you rattled and wrung out.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/09/2024

“Sora’s film is set at a Japanese private school in a very near future where society is waiting on tenterhooks for an earthquake that’s predicted to cause unprecedented devastation. In the meantime, boys will be boys, and the film follows two class clowns approaching graduation and growing apart. It’s like if Superbad took place on the eve of the apocalypse.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/02/2025

“Director Paul Greengrass turns the white-knuckle, true-life tale of a school bus lost amid the 2018 California wildfires into a laughable pile of Hollywood hokum. Co-scripted by Mare Of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby, The Lost Bus is full of the kind of horseshit screenwriters add to wax the egos of movie stars, and it does not reflect well on anyone involved.” – North Shore Movies, 09/28/2025

“You can be a literal bomb-throwing radical and still wake up one morning to discover you’ve become a crabby old conservative. DiCaprio’s consternation is a howl, and sometimes this feels like a whole movie made out of that scene near the end of Hollywood when Leo’s Rick Dalton is screaming at the Manson family and slurping margaritas out of the blender.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/25/2025