“A tangy little bit of literary score-settling, taking the piss out of mid-century macho myths of what a Great American Writer was supposed to be. Staged in a deceptively dry fashion by Swedish director Björn Runge, the movie lulls you into a false sense of decorous complacency before the claws come out. The melodramatic second hour is simply delicious.” – North Shore Movies 09/13/2018

“To summarize the plot of Mandy would probably take about two sentences and be entirely beside the point. This is an atmosphere picture steeped in dread, punctuated by heavy metal blasts of cathartic carnage. The movie isn’t just set in 1983, it feels like a memory of something you might have watched that year on late night cable after your parents fell asleep.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/11/2018

“The counterintuitive casting works because the chemistry between Ryder and Reeves is so instantaneous and their ease on screen with each other so delightfully palpable. All the yammering put-downs become a form of flirtation. Ugly-spirited zingers that would draw blood from other actors end up tossed aside here with wry, rumpled smiles.” – North Shore Movies, 09/08/2018

“I was not above laughing out loud at the most groan-inducing references, as when Kranz wanders the halls looking for room ‘2B’ or Levine ordering his damned dog Spot to get out of his chair. But every Midsummer adaptation stumbles over the supernatural stuff, which is done no favors by the specificity of a movie camera and perhaps needs the abstraction of a stage.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/29/2018

“Works better than it probably should thanks to the canny casting of Hawke, deftly employing the star’s generational baggage to portray a scruffy, goateed ‘90s icon gone to seed, washed up and living in a barn behind his ex-wife’s house, estranged from litter of children with different mothers who all hate his guts. Reality, as it turns out, bites.” – North Shore Movies, 08/23/2018

“Full of broad comic conceits the direction sheepishly undercuts in search of a psychological realism that the screenplay isn’t specific enough to provide. It’s a curiously muted affair, with large, artificial setups and phony plot hooks of a conventional studio comedy petering out into the disappointments and anti-climaxes of a mopey indie drama.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/21/2018

“Frizzell fearlessly marches our heroines into the the raunchy, druggy boys’ club territory of movies like The Hangover and Superbad. Her gasp-inducing finale pays off an hour’s worth of constipation gags with an ever-escalating, scatological set-piece scored to Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ that is both astounding in its grossness and unexpectedly quite tender.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/21/2018

“Moretz is a bit too self-possessed to sell the screenplay’s occasional pangs of doubt. The film works better as an aspirational depiction of kids resilient enough to look past the short-sighted hangups of the adults in their lives who are currently calling the shots. These characters are going to mean a lot to young people stuck in similar situations.” – North Shore Movies, 08/16/2018

“This summer’s most brashly entertaining movie is also the most terrifying film of the year. Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman will leave your sides aching from laughter and your stomach twisted in knots. This scabrously funny film may take place four decades in the past, but it never lets you forget how the sickness it documents is still surging in the present.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/10/2018

“A refreshingly unconventional biopic focusing on the part of its subject’s life nobody cares about, it’s the story of a has-been slouching toward an ignominious end. But the movie has an unexpectedly generous spirit. It plays as a gentle human comedy about life on the road with a high-maintenance former legend, like a slowed-down My Favorite Year on smack.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/07/2018