“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

“Genial fuckarounds for the genuinely gifted Sandler and his moderately talented posse, these Happy Madison films felt so insulting when you had to make the actual effort to drive somewhere and hand over your hard-earned money to see them, but now that they just pop up unsolicited on Netflix I suppose there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.” – North Shore Movies, 10/07/2020

“Director Garrett Bradley does something fascinating with all this home video footage. Instead of presenting a straight chronology or clearly delineated flashbacks, she and editor Gabriel Rhodes have collapsed past and present into one big continuous reverie, allowing snippets of scenes old and new to soar away on a gorgeous solo piano score.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/07/2020

“Despite the delightful counterintuitive casting of America’s mom Phylicia Rashad as a mad scientist, it’s a flat, cheap-looking film with borderline hilarious ‘science-fiction’ props, like a web of produce department plastic draped over the head of our protagonist while a bank of computer modules beep and blink like the navigation system in The Black Hole.” – North Shore Movies, 10/06/2020