“Seeing all these side characters awkwardly shoehorned in reminded me of how Joe Pesci kept showing up in the later Lethal Weapon sequels even though there was no reason for him to be around anymore after the second one. He was just there because it was another Lethal Weapon movie and they figured audiences expected to see him again.” – North Shore Movies, 03/04/2021

“Daniels is less interested in historical particulars than he is fascinated by the woozy, downward spiral of Lady Day. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or other such scrubbed, sanitized star bios, this is a fearlessly squalid movie, awash in bloody needles, blackened veins and a smoky, scarily compelling backstage atmosphere of rough sex and casual abuse.” – North Shore Movies, 02/26/2021

“It’s almost as if there are two movies going on here at the same time: a sparse, surrealist spatter film with our silent star fighting mechanical monsters, and a nigh-unwatchable horror comedy in which half a dozen or so obnoxious teens show up to interrupt him, dispensing bad banter and laborious backstory while we wait impatiently for them to die.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2021

“Inventing its own comedic ecosystem as it goes along, Wiig and Mumolo’s bonkers follow-up to Bridesmaids proceeds as a cockamamie collection of non sequiturs including an orchestra of mice playing the movie’s musical score, a lounge pianist who sings only about ‘boobies’ and sage words of advice from a talking crab voiced by Morgan Freeman.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2021

“Director Shaka King has fashioned this harrowing history lesson into a passionate, pulpy crime drama in the mold of The Departed and earlier Warner Bros. gangster pictures, but with a pointed political agenda. Though set in 1969, the film feels like very much a product of our recent, culture-wide reckoning with America’s racist power structures.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/11/2021

“Fox has an almost comically carnal screen presence that feels like a wonderful affront to a contemporary American cinema more sexless than the days of the Hays Code. You feel like you’re doing something dirty just by looking at her, and the first half of the film works best because she’s allowed to be an obscene abstraction.” – North Shore Movies, 02/08/2021

“Meneghetti’s camerawork is as furtive as their affair, spying on the characters through peepholes and around corners. It’s a visceral film, fervent and sensual, flooded with unruly emotions. You feel the ardor of the lovers in their impossible circumstances, and swoon at the flickers of recognition that cross Chevalier’s otherwise immobile face.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/05/2021

“A nice movie about nice people. These are gifted under-actors, with Firth doing that thing where he conveys enormous amounts of emotion without moving any of the muscles in his face. What’s missing from the film, I’m afraid, is the terror. All the postcard cinematography and pleasant parties paper over what’s ugliest about this damnable disease.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/05/2021

“There’s probably no way I wasn’t going to fall hard for a picture in which a boozy projectionist teaches a kid life lessons by showing him old movies. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to be moved by Abu Alala’s belief in art as a liberating force, and all the ways books, music and cinema can work as keys to unlocking the prisons in which we’re born.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/29/2021

“The whole movie looks like it takes place inside a catalog. Yet, depending on your tolerance for sun-dappled montages in which characters ‘live, laugh, love’ to what must have been exorbitantly expensive Led Zeppelin songs, the film goes down surprisingly easily. There’s a Hallmark-y comfort-food quality to Our Friend, but don’t expect it to tell you the truth.” – North Shore Movies, 01/21/2021