“A diamond-hard distillation of the themes and preoccupations Schrader has been wrestling with throughout his career, it updates and revises his legendary Taxi Driver screenplay for an era of commodified religion and environmental ruin. First Reformed is a major work by a cinema giant, urgently reckoning with issues both current and eternal.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/24/2018
“A breezy summer entertainment that benefits from high spirits and low expectations, Solo works best when it’s not bending over backwards trying to tie itself in with other Star Wars stories. For the most part this is a rousing space Western with a cast of lovable rogues, occasionally interrupted by spasms of shoe-horned references to the previous pictures.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 05/23/2018
“A significant improvement over the original while still not being particularly good, Deadpool 2 isn’t trying so hard to pretend like it’s something ‘dangerous’ and is perfectly content to be a typical summer superhero smash-up, albeit slightly snarkier than the competition across the hall. For all the vulgar showboating, this is a careful, corporate product.” – North Shore Movies, 05/17/2018
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR * 1 / 2
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans and Josh Brolin. Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo.
“It’s a prismatic portrait, albeit an occasionally confusing one. Some of the footage feels revelatory and some of it just seems random. What works as connective tissue are the stunning musical performances to which the film returns at regular intervals, with Jones strutting her stuff in staging originally designed by the late Eiko Ishioka.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/19/2018
“A nerve-shredding, artsploitation action picture, with Ramsay mixing and matching elements of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and John Boorman’s Point Blank to create something audaciously all her own. You Were Never Really Here is an icky, rotgut noir filtered through a prism of abstract art. It’s like a Charles Bronson movie directed by Alain Resnais.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 04/12/2018
A QUIET PLACE * 1 / 2
Starring Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe and Cade Woodward. Screenplay by Brian Woods, Scott Beck and John Krasinski. Directed by John Krasinski.
”Subserviently seeks to flatter its target audience with a spectacular array of semi-clever references to cool stuff from their childhoods. Meanwhile an otherwise unremarkable, antisocial, adolescent white boy’s skill at video games and deep knowledge of trivial ephemera will somehow save the world. This is fanboy fellatio and I found it all almost unbearably depressing.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/29/2018
”When Wes Anderson’s meticulous constructions work, the deeply felt emotions stirred up by their stories reverberate against his dollhouse designs in fascinating ways. When they don’t click, you can feel like you’re stuck spending two hours in somebody’s Etsy store. Isle of Dogs is one of the ones that works, for the most part.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/28/2018
“Soderbergh shoots the scare sequences like an old master playing with a new toy, nestling up uncomfortably close to his star with the unfiltered image quality peering into her every pore. He’s got his tiny camera looming above her shoulder or directly under Foy’s face, so it often feels like the movie itself is stalking her.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 03/23/2018
SPLICED PERSONALITY 