“I’m pretty sure there’s an audience for this deliberately naïve, pie-eyed, old-fashioned musical celebrating the life of P.T. Barnum as a ‘Hey, let’s put on a show!’ tribute to outcasts and oversized dreams. But I’m even surer that I’m not a part of that audience, given how much of the running time I spent groaning with my face buried in my hands.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/22/2017
“The movie feels at odds with itself, chiding the audience for disrespecting Harding’s underprivileged background while at the same time chock full of sight gags sniggering at poor people. There’s also a thuddingly obvious collection of needle-drop soundtrack cues so on-the-nose I left the theater wishing someone could have kneecapped the music supervisor.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/21/2017
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI * * * *
Starring Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac and Carrie Fisher. Written and directed by Rian Johnson.
“Enchanting and annoying in equal measures, this perversely adult fairy tale plays like a collection of the filmmaker’s private fetishes spackled over with an unconvincing coat of feel-good whimsy. The Shape Of Water is one of those peculiar movies that clearly means a lot to the person who made it, but leaves the audience stranded on a distant shore.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/08/2017
“Such self-plagiarism is nothing new for Woody Allen, who these days mostly seems to be mixing and matching scenes and themes from his previous pictures more out of habit than inspiration. Wonder Wheel runs down a checklist of the filmmaker’s tired pet obsessions while occasionally playing like a parody of post-war Broadway miserabilism.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/07/2017
“The evocative animation sticks to bold, simple line drawings, my favorite design belonging to a massive hulk of an adult figure who becomes an unlikely ally to Parvana. I was captivated by how much director Twomey is able to convey by the fashion in which he slices fruit, a pause in his process bringing one of the film’s most unexpected emotional payoffs.” – North Shore Movies, 12/07/2017
“It’s very entertaining, borrowing bits of Bowfinger and of course Ed Wood while putting a happy face on our misfit moviemakers and their oversized dreams. What it doesn’t do is probe the darkness bubbling underneath all the bungling. The movie meticulously re-creates The Room’s most famously botched scenes, but shies away from its tortured soul.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/01/2017
ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ. * *
Starring Denzel Washington, Carmen Ejogo, Amanda Warren, Hugo Armstrong and Colin Farrell. Written and directed by Dan Gilroy.
JUSTICE LEAGUE * 1 / 2
Starring Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller. Screenplay by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon. Directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon.
“Three Billboards is the most consistently surprising film I’ve seen this year not because of its plot twists, but because these characters are constantly revealing unexpected sides of themselves. It’s a movie full of furious folks acting out with moral certainty and righteous indignation, all of them only slowly learning just how little they know.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 11/17/2017
SPLICED PERSONALITY 