“Transplanting a cringe-inducing relationship comedy into Wicker Man territory, Aster conjures some of the summer’s sickest laughs. Amid all the entrails and ritual sacrifice, Midsommar is also a droll comedy of manners, an irresistible revenge fantasy and a warning to bad boyfriends everywhere. It’s the best breakup movie I’ve seen in ages.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 07/01/2019
“A shambles, featuring far too many interview subjects to keep straight and a wobbly sense of rhythm that sometimes seems to forget about Berg for big stretches of screen time. There’s an overreliance on familiar stock footage and the kind of chintzy production music you hear in industrial videos. It feels like something you’d be forced to watch in school.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/26/2019
“A deliberate re-entrenchment for the director, Anna is not a movie about new tricks but rather a wallow through Besson’s familiar fetishes. This means lots of long tracking shots in which our long-limbed ingenue struts through opulent hotel hallways packing pistols, plus some spectacular action set-pieces filmed with the high gloss of fashion photography.” – North Shore Movies, 06/25/2019
“Like an aging rock band on a summer shed tour a decade or two after being relevant, it hits all the expected notes with a practiced professionalism and provides a fun night out for anyone who isn’t foolish enough to expect any inspiration. Mildly amusing and profoundly unnecessary, it’s got everything you’re looking for except for anything new.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/20/2019
“What’s depressing is that a film so progressive half-a-century ago has been revived as an ass-backwards celebration of boorish, boomer intransigence. How could they do this to John Shaft? One of the coolest characters in movie history is now a reactionary old crank pissing and moaning about those damn millennials and their coconut water.” – North Shore Movies, 06/16/2019
“One shot of these shambling cadavers mindlessly muttering product names while staring at their smartphones sort of says it all without bringing anything fresh to the table. It doesn’t help that we’ve been oversaturated with zombie stories for the past few years. This is the first Jarmusch film that feels behind the curve instead of ahead of it.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/12/2019
“In what’s bound to be an enormous headache for more serious-minded music historians, Scorsese has combined all sorts of amazing archival footage and half-kidding contemporary interviews with figures both real and fictitious to create a raucous, wildly entertaining collage that spends at least thirty percent of its screen time pulling your leg.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 06/11/2019
“For fans, these 110 minutes will feel very much like a dream indeed, one full of fond, familiar faces in which old wrongs are righted, amends made and everyone takes a turn on the dance floor before getting a proper, sentimental sendoff. It will be your considerable happiness to see them again. But none of this comes easily. It’s still Deadwood, after all.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/30/2019
“Assayas has got a lot of ideas about how living in a digital realm has altered our attitudes toward art and culture, and he crams just about all of them into the guise of a sly sex comedy. He’s couched at least three movies’ worth of complex concepts inside an old-fashioned bedroom farce. It’s like a TED Talk in which everybody’s screwing and I loved it.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/16/2019
“Kahiu struggles a bit juggling the tonal shifts and bungles a central act of violence, but even her missteps have a scrappy quality I found endearing. Rafiki reminds me of those occasionally clumsy underdog indies from the ‘90s New Queer Cinema movement, like a Kenyan cousin to The Incredibly True Adventures Of Two Girls In Love.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/10/2019
SPLICED PERSONALITY 