“The world of David Mamet is divided between hustlers and marks. You’re either playing an angle or you’re being played. Henry Johnson could be the playwright’s bluntest expression of these themes yet, one of those late period works in which artists of a certain age stop smuggling their ideas underneath the drama and just come out and say what they mean.” – North Shore Movies, 05/08/2025
”If your mom doesn’t have the stomach for the Brattle’s annual Mother’s Day screening of Psycho, you’ll have plenty of options on the other side of the square. The Harvard Film Archive’s Mother’s Day Mini-Marathon features seven 35mm prints of big screen classics examining maternal love in all its complex and sometimes maddening dimensions.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/08/2025
”Calling it the best Marvel movie in years isn’t saying much, but it’s something. Thunderbolts* reminds us that the reason those early MCU adventures caught on was not because of special effects or intergalactic lore, but because they were workplace comedies about characters we enjoyed spending time with. Modest charms are nonetheless charming.” – North Shore Movies, 05/05/2025
”Palaud exhibits no interest whatsoever in her subject’s accomplishments, skipping immediately ahead to the drudgery of her heroin addiction. The indictments of boorish behavior by men in the film industry are indeed apt, but what’s ironic is that by refusing to see Schneider as an artist, the movie is guilty of some of the same sins as the director it tries to demonize.” – North Shore Movies, 05/05/2025
“If there’s a conspiracy that means your wife died for a reason. One of the things about people dying, especially when they die young, is that it seems meaningless. We have evolved to look for meaning in everything. It’s one of the strengths and weaknesses of our species. And if you can’t find meaning, you invent meaning, and that’s what a conspiracy theory is.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/24/2025
”Coward’s screenplay is a marvel of construction, beginning with the end of the affair as seen by a nosy neighbor of Laura’s who has no idea what kind of emotionally volatile farewell she’s just wandered into. Neither do we, until the scene is replayed at the end of the picture. Meanwhile the trains come and go, carrying missed connections and broken hearts.” – Crooked Marquee, 04/18/2025
“In a movie year without big-name, buzzy breakouts from Sundance or South By Southwest, IFFBoston is relying more on documentaries and foreign language films and less on marquee stars. Having been able to preview some of this year’s offerings, I found the scrappy lineup characteristically excellent, even if some of the topics sound like tough sells.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/17/2025
”There are ideas here about cultural appropriation being a form of vampirism, also a tantalizing angle about Blacks and the Irish sharing a history of oppression, plus some bracingly heretical notions about Christianity. Just as Sinners never exclusively belongs to a single genre, it’s also never about just one thing. The movie is too wildly ambitious and overstuffed for that.” – North Shore Movies, 04/17/2025
“The film follows Young hitting the Pacific Coast Highway for a tour of outdoor venues in 2023. It’s a lot of iPhone and GoPro footage of varying quality, with an easygoing emphasis on the downtime between gigs. The mellowest of hangout movies, there’s a laid-back charm to the picture and I found myself admiring its cozy willingness to be boring.” – North Shore Movies, 04/16/2025
“Recent events seem intent on reminding us that we’re never quite as far along as we think we are, so Lee’s beloved farce gets a thoughtful 2025 makeover from director Andrew Ahn, who finds a few fresh angles on the old story while mining the material more for melodrama than comedy. It’s a warm-hearted movie that probably could have used a few more laughs.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/16/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 