“Wallowing in a scuzzy underworld of nudie booths and porno shoots, the sleaziest major Hollywood release of 1986 is an ugly, urgent thriller made by a director with something to prove. What sets 52 Pick-Up apart from countless other tawdry thrillers of its era are the film’s ruthless efficiency and astonishing cruelty. This movie has a mean streak a mile wide.” – Crooked Marquee, 04/11/2025
“Based on Mendoza’s actual experiences in Ramadi, it’s a real-time chronicle of U.S. Navy SEALs attempting to extract a wounded soldier from a house under siege that’s so stripped of any drama or editorializing sometimes it barely feels like a movie. I will concede that Warfare is a technically impressive achievement. But good God, y’all. What is it good for?” – North Shore Movies, 04/11/2025
“Look at the limited series as a savvy brand relaunch, with the Red Sox enlisting Netflix to help reintroduce themselves to disgruntled fans. The highly touted ‘unprecedented’ access mostly means they’ve left the f-bombs in, with cameras in the dugout and the clubhouse catching players in appealingly relaxed, if not exactly revelatory situations.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/07/2025
”This revelation carries The Friend past a few false endings, and it’s the smartest thing about the film’s refusal to anthropomorphize Apollo. We may never be able to fully comprehend those we choose to share our lives with. In the end, people are as frustrating, complicated and essentially unknowable as another species altogether. But we can love them.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/03/2025
“The leggy bombshell is like nothing like these tweedy academics have ever seen, and Hawks gets enormous comic mileage out of their awestruck reactions to finding themselves in the same room as Barbara Stanwyck. (Honestly, they hold it together better than I would have.) This is the only live-action remake of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs anyone needed.“ – Crooked Marquee, 03/28/2025
“He looked how he looked: an unassuming, ordinary guy with an arsenal of grins, winks and chilling stares he could shade into infinite variations. His voice was higher and huskier than you expected, its cracks a key to his often aching vulnerability onscreen. Hackman excelled at portraying gruff men with volcanic tempers, yet few stars seemed so easily wounded.“ – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/27/2025
”Supposedly adapted from a novel by The Punisher writer Chuck Dixon, the screenplay by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone is an uncredited amalgam of Liam Neeson dad fantasies warmed over with sprinkles of Epstein QAnon seasoning and a lot of dolorous honor and duty stuff about the armed forces. It’s all pretty draggy, downcast and should have been a lot more fun.” – North Shore Movies, 03/27/2025
”It’s a Guiraudie movie without any onscreen sex, yet it’s the one in which characters are driven daffiest by their desires. Repression makes everything worse, it seems. Misericordia has a wicked sense of humor that sneaks up on you. It’s an uneasy, pokerfaced kind of comedy that thrives on the viewer stewing in discomfort over the increasingly amoral twists.” – North Shore Movies, 03/27/2025
”Director Burnett’s whimsical 1999 romance was long thought lost for good; a casualty of cruel critics, fickle distributors and the precarious indie film ecosystem. But thanks to the valiant rescue efforts of the good folks at Milestone Film and Video, a new 4K restoration of this quirky little charmer is finally seeing the light of a projector at the Brattle Theatre.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/26/2025
Joined my buddy Blake Howard for his new podcast about John Frankenheimer’s underrated 1998 espionage thriller. We discuss the killer script by David Mamet and the wittiness of De Niro playing the superspy with a relaxed twinkle in his eye. He and Jean Reno have such great chemistry together you wish they’d made three or four more of these. – One Heat Minute, 03/26/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 