“Everyone understands we’re here to see Jolie in her first action movie since 2010’s Salt. She struts, she swears, she gets drunk and parachutes off the back of a speeding pickup truck. Angelina outruns bolts of lightning and her sensitive mama bear side comes out by teaching the kid filthy rhymes about fucking pheasants. Gawd, I’ve missed our girl.” – North Shore Movies, 05/17/2021

“It’s astonishing how little interest the movie has in exploring its provocative premise, with none of Rock’s incisive political sensibility to be found in a film that’s all but begging for it. With subtext-as-text horror like Get Out and The Purge pictures being all the rage these days, Spiral feels sheepish and timid, gory in a way that’s afraid to draw any real blood.” – North Shore Movies, 05/17/2021

“The droll Ward siblings dish dirt and take us for a tour around the grounds to see stuff like the room in which Freddie Mercury spent weeks noodling around with what eventually became ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ It’s fine, but any documentary that begins with Black Sabbath and ends with Coldplay kinda can’t help but be a little deflating, you know?” – North Shore Movies, 05/13/2021

“It’s really a whole mood, this picture. Men sit quietly and brood in the chiaroscuro cinematography, with an omnipresent cello score by Christopher Benstead that sounds like he’s scraping the bottom of the instrument. I’m an easy lay for this kind of thing, when a filmmaker marries a visual idea to a storytelling conceit. They used to call it directing.” – North Shore Movies, 05/06/2021

“Well-researched and even more well-meaning, Crisis provides plenty of sobering statistics but the drama is stilted and schematic. Traffic suffered from some similar screenwriting woes that were transcended by its killer cast and Soderbergh’s alchemical camera savvy. The characters here feel as muted and colorless as the gunmetal grey cinematography.” – North Shore Movies, 05/04/2021

“The gnarly centerpiece of Clancy’s novel found our protagonist interrogating an operative by imploding him with a deep-sea diver’s decompression chamber. The movie goes one better by having Jordan set a Russian official’s limo on fire, then jump into the backseat and torture information out of the guy while the car is slowly engulfed by flames. Awesome.” – North Shore Movies, 04/30/2021

“What’s welcome is a worthwhile role for Mila Kunis, a fine actress we see too little of these days outside of whiskey commercials. She emphasizes an addict’s animal cunning, eyes always alert for a fresh angle. Looking at her ravaged visage it’s a miracle Molly’s made it to 31, but thanks to Kunis’ abrasive energy you get a sense of how she’s survived.” – North Shore Movies, 04/29/2021

“Most movies concerning refugees depict them as faceless, huddled masses defined by their suffering, whereas in Limbo these are idiosyncratic, sometimes extremely annoying individuals. Sharrock’s trying to make a comedy about a serious subject usually only addressed in documentaries. He doesn’t always succeed, but when his jokes land they leave a mark.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/29/2021

“The movie provides gratuitous violence in abundance if not ebullience –mostly in constricted closeups, cut together only semi-coherently– dutifully disposing of guts and limbs. The famous video game catch-phrases are trotted out for moments people probably would have applauded in a crowded theater, but at home on HBO Max elicit far more subdued reactions.” – North Shore Movies, 04/23/2021

“Mosese’s debut is the sort that gets us critics reaching for our lofty rhetoric in part because it’s so thrilling to watch. This is one of those movies that seems to be inventing a new cinematic language as it goes along. By turns alienating and enthralling, it’s an experience richer, deeper and much stranger than I’ve had with a film in some time.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/09/2021