“As a collection of talking heads all nodding in admiration, haphazardly assembled with some relevant movie clips and chintzy music, this is boilerplate dead-celebrity bio-doc stuff that will make pleasant enough home viewing for those with a mild interest in the subject. In other words, exactly the kind of stuffy hagiography Pauline probably would have hated.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/21/2019

“After four flights in the Millennium Falcon, Harrison Ford has proved himself peerless when it comes to palling around with comically oversized canines that don’t actually exist, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how moved I was by his relationship with Buck. Ford does what all the special effects can’t pull off. He makes you believe the dog is real.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/19/2020

“A big part of of going to the movies is the pleasure of looking at beautiful women, but I don’t think we’re supposed to say as much in polite company these days. So it’s something of a relief when a film takes this aspect expressly as its subject, and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is indeed all about the act of looking, and what it means to be seen.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/12/2020

“It’s all a matter of routine, which the movie conveys with an artfully numbed sense of dread. The Assistant illustrates how entrenched power structures perpetuate themselves in an office environment, and how everybody who’s interested in sticking around for very long knows enough to mind their place and when to look the other way.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/07/2020

“Partially a product relaunch, this surprisingly sturdy documentary is itself a savvy business maneuver, positioning one of the biggest stars in the world as a comeback-hungry underdog while introducing us to a new Taylor 2.0 who cusses, disobeys her advisors and is unafraid to speak out about politics, women’s issues and anything else she damn well pleases.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/30/2020

“It’s difficult to imagine a more spectacularly depressing lineup of films. The nominees, which are of substantially higher quality (if not higher spirits) than in recent years, cover such crowd-pleasing topics as cancer, kidnapping, child rape, abortion, Alzheimer’s and animal abuse. I watched them all in a row and needed to go lie down for a little while.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/29/2020

“It’s a bustling ecosystem of hustlers and hoods, all working at shared interests and cross purposes with the density — if not the detail — you’d find in a Richard Price novel or a David Simon television series. Ly isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve, with elements of Training Day and La Haine bumping up against memories of Clockers and The Wire.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/16/2020

“The secret weapon here of course is Stewart. Wearing a bleach-blonde buzz-cut and a bomber jacket over a sports bra, the former Twilight teen turned international art cinema icon shows no signs of slumming as she applies her trademark inverted-Brando millennial murmurings to the screenplay’s stock scenarios. I loved watching her in this.” – North Shore Movies, 01/10/2019

“A visually monotonous experience. It’s cinema as a VR headset, where all the expressive qualities of the art — images staged to convey ideas and juxtaposed for thematic emphasis — have been replaced by a dull literal-mindedness, a quote-unquote immersive trip into unconvincing verisimilitude that makes a lousy substitute for drama.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/08/2020

“This is one swarthy, full-throated, four-hanky tear-jerker. Set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, it’s a tale of two sisters torn asunder by the bullheaded men in their lives. It’s a bold, brassy film of hyper-saturated colors and oversized emotions, thrusting the camera so close to the characters’ faces you can count the beads of sweat on their brows.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/03/2020