“The elephant in the room here is that they accidentally made a real movie last time. So of course J.J. Abrams was brought back on board to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. Alas, we’re back to the monomyth and old, tiresome prophecies about chosen ones who will bring balance and everyone in this entire universe is fucking related.” – North Shore Movies, 12/20/2019

“Much as you’d probably expect from a #MeToo movie made by men, Bombshell wants to take down the designated misogynist villain while paying no attention at all to the structures and paradigms that allowed him to flourish in the first place. Why on Earth would you make a film about Fox News and leave politics (mostly) out of it?” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/19/2019

“Clint’s bozo antics at the RNC notwithstanding, his work has always had a hardcore libertarian bent, with Richard Jewell being the latest and perhaps bluntest articulation yet of his go-it-alone philosophy. The movie is mid-tier Eastwood, a classically crafted, crowd-pleasing character study that suffers from one dumb decision threatening to derail the whole thing.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/12/2019

“Apted and his editors preface their interviews with snippets from the previous pictures, so in a span of several minutes we see these subjects age more than half-a-century. We watch eyes grow hard and bodies get soft. The walks lose a step while youthful belligerence gives way to something more circumspect and considered. It’s a remarkable thing to witness.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/11/2019

“Set in Senegal, the story starts as an arresting ethnographic study until it takes a hard right turn into the mystic. With unerring confidence behind the camera, Atlantics steadily grows into something ever more mythical and strange, like a seaside campfire tale told by old sailors’ widows. You might think you know where it’s going, but you don’t.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/05/2019

“The kind of movie they say they don’t make anymore, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is a smashing, old fashioned entertainment with a saucy, contemporary edge. This is a brainy crowd-pleaser focused on the pleasures of big movie star performances and crafty writing, two quantities in short supply these days at franchise-dominated multiplexes.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/26/2019

“For such a messy subject, Marriage Story feels a mite too meticulously designed. There’s none of the sickening emotional dread you feel in obvious influences like Scenes From A Marriage or Husbands And Wives, but rather just the sadness of watching likable people muck about hurting each other while you’re waiting for them to work through it all eventually.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/22/2019

”It’s a promising setup: a flip, ‘90s cynic taken aback by Rogers’ unflappable sincerity, assuming this has all gotta be some kind of act and digging deeper to discover that the guy’s the real deal. Unfortunately it comes off like what would’ve happened if Citizen Kane had devoted half the movie to the home life of that reporter who was investigating Rosebud.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/20/2019

“This is one of those movies where terrific character actors wear lanyards and stride purposefully down hallways speaking to one another in hushed tones. I love this kind of stuff, and Burns keeps the pace percolating with the jittery handheld energy and slinky synthesizer sounds associated with Soderbergh, if not his mentor’s gift for indelible images.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/15/2019

“A gangster movie to end all gangster movies, akin to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in that it finds a filmmaker reflecting on the genre he helped define, issuing what feels like his final word on the subject. It’s sprawling, enthralling and often hilarious when it isn’t busy being deeply, unfathomably sad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/13/2019