“Our cultural associations with Mel Gibson have become so unpleasant in recent years that casting him as a miserable asshole Santa Claus is a gag so good there’s probably no way any movie could do it justice. Putting the snarling nastiness of Gibson’s present-day, walking-cigarette-butt persona in the service of jolly sentiments is a joke that writes itself.” – North Shore Movies, 11/13/2020

“Loren commands the screen with the same leonine ferocity she brought to De Sica’s Two Women some sixty years ago. The tough old broad and the crafty street urchin is a mismatch as old as movies themselves, and the pleasures of the film lie in how confidently it embraces these timeless tropes with just a few tweaks to bring the story into the present day.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/13/2020

“Cronenberg’s relentlessly gnarly thriller comes with a pulverizing soundscape of echoes and screams. Slicker and less cerebral than his father’s work, the film nonetheless contains familiar fixations on the loss of identity when technology merges with the new flesh, as well as an ick factor through the roof. In other words, the kid’s a chip off the old block.” – North Shore Movies, 11/13/2020

“White Noise trusts the viewer enough to treat us like adults who can see for ourselves the vast emptiness in the lives of these people, their intense need for the validation of strangers and how desperately they cling to the notion of birthright superiority because they have no other ideas or accomplishments of which to speak.” – North Shore Movies, 10/31/2020

“Like Western Stars, the film was shot at Springsteen’s ranch in New Jersey by director Thom Zimny, alternating excellent performance footage in Bruce’s home studio with slightly gaseous oratory as the camera caresses his property’s exteriors. I’m not sure I’d quite call it ‘a movie,’ but this is one of the more soulful promotional items you’ll come across.” – North Shore Movies, 10/31/2020

“Coppola has perhaps too dreamy a disposition for the snap of screwball comedy, allowing space to study the ripples a teardrop makes in a half-empty martini glass. On The Rocks is a beguilingly personal picture, with the First Daughter of American cinema making a movie about a woman trying to find her own light in the shadow of a larger-than-life dad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/22/2020

“The perfect movie for a country sickened by plague and politics, it finds our disgraced reporter stumbling undercover around CPAC, synagogues and anti-mask rallies. Unspeakably gross and containing something sure to offend just about everybody, it’s also sort of sweet. Schmaltzy, even. Or at least as schmaltzy as a Baron Cohen movie can be.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/21/2020

“It’s a story perfectly suited for Sorkin, a screenwriter who specializes in soaring, self-righteous speeches by quippy idealists who love being smarter than you. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is his best script since The Social Network, chockablock with hyperliterate zingers and groovy grandstanding. Nobody really talks this way but we all wish we did.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/15/2020

“Shot in secret over the past few months, it’s a sober, step-by-step recounting of the Trump administration’s catastrophically bungled response to COVID-19. There are no big revelations here, the movie’s mostly stuff we already knew. Yet seeing it all laid out end-to-end like this made me so furious I had to go walk it off for a little while.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/14/2020

“Writer-director Quirke clearly saw Black Swan and liked it an awful lot, but I’m starting to think that filmmakers should have to apply for a license before being allowed to shoot in ‘scope. Maybe require them to turn in two or three storyboards showing how they plan to utilize the widescreen frame for something more than just TV that’s squinting.” – North Shore Movies, 10/13/2020