“As the title might have tipped you off, it isn’t exactly heavy on plot. This largely improvised film has the loose rhythms of day-to-day life, with the director hanging back and regarding his characters in mostly unobtrusive medium shots. A lot of it could pass for a documentary, until upon reflection you realize how carefully Esparza’s set up his story beats.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/04/2019

“The movie presents common knowledge with gasps of shock and awe. It’s like getting a breathless lecture on something you lived through from someone who just learned about it yesterday. McKay never settles on a through-line. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened, shuffled all out of order and repeated a few times extra loud for the cheap seats.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018

“The crackerjack ensemble makes a meal out of Baldwin’s prose. Jenkins loves letting his characters speak directly into the lens, lending a gutsy emotional immediacy while James Laxton’s breathtaking cinematography grants even the tackiest 1970s orange and yellow decor an ethereal glow. It’s an achingly beautiful film, and so terribly sad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018

“The Mule ambles along in the unhurried fashion of Clint’s easygoing Americana road pictures like Honkytonk Man or A Perfect World. Always a more thoughtful filmmaker than his often boneheaded public statements would lead you to believe, Eastwood fashions the picture into a sneaky examination of white privilege. There’s a lot going on under the hood here.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018

“Julia Roberts tells people off the way Steve McQueen drives or Al Pacino yells. Nobody does it better. So I can’t for the life of me understand why Hedges would discard all the carefully observed family drama and devote the back half of the picture to a forehead-smacking thriller plot that’s both incomprehensible and inane.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018

“But it is in what Dafoe calls this ‘gaudy and unlivable present’ that the film truly roars. Vox Lux is an ostentatious diagnosis of contemporary American malaise, often horrifically funny and excitingly unencumbered by questions of good taste. Or, as I texted a friend shortly after the screening, ‘This movie is kind of an asshole and I think I love it.’” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/14/2018

“A madcap, laugh-a-minute sprint calling out just how unimaginative contemporary studio animation has become. Spider-Verse cheerfully tosses aside the Pixar house style to which most CGI adventures are beholden, indulging instead in wild, expressionistic flights of fancy complete with flying thought balloons, sound-effects text bubbles and narration blocks.” – North Shore Movies, 12/13/2018

”Von Trotta’s beguilingly personal project is a loose collection of conversations about the legendary filmmaker’s life and influence, offering a counterintuitively shaggy portrait of giant renowned for his rigid austerity. There are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon than watching a bunch of brilliant artists talk about their favorite Bergman pictures.” – North Shore Movies, 12/13/2018

”Five Fingers For Marseilles transplants the style and structure of 1960s Italian spaghetti westerns to the shantytowns of South Africa. Cape Town native Michael Matthews lovingly cribs from the Sergios to craft a craggy, gutbucket epic full of slightly silly, mythopoetic grandeur and a tart taste of regional politics. It’s amazing how well some tropes travel.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/07/2018

“Cuarón always utilizes the longest, most visually extravagant route into even the simplest of scenes, and after a while the self-conscious virtuosity becomes overbearing. It feels a bit like taking an aircraft carrier to go around the corner to CVS. Eventually I found myself longing for a boring old two-shot where people just talk to each other.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/06/2018