“Thick with the heavy, gun-metal austerity of films like Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Todd Field’s Tár, The Brutalist sometimes feels like a director trying to will a masterpiece into being. Corbet very nearly gets there. The filmmaking hums with purpose and import, paced at a marvelously brisk clip. The textures and scale of the movie are astonishing.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/09/2025
”The first half of Hard Truths winds up Pansy and sends her blasting away with motormouth jags and pity any poor shopkeepers, grocery clerks or innocent bystanders who happen to get in the way. Some of these scenes, such as a sidesplitting riff on baby clothes, feel like they could be from a British Afro-Caribbean version of Curb Your Enthusiasm.” – North Shore Movies, 01/09/2025
“An awards season narrative in search of a movie. The wispy, barely-there screenplay by sitcom writer Kate Gersten is a logline padded out to 85 minutes. I’d initially hoped the incessant montages were some sort of sly tribute to Baywatch, but they seem mostly intended to get the movie up to feature length. The Last Showgirl would barely be an hour without them.” – North Shore Movies, 01/09/2025
“It took some time for me to figure out why The Room Next Door sounded so familiar, and then I realized that the dialogue is straight out of an ‘80s Woody Allen movie. These are verbose New Yorkers musing about art, literature, morality and death. If you recast the leads with Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest, the film could be from Allen’s Another Woman era.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/07/2025
“Hurtles through the 178-minute running time at a breathless clip, with nods to modern franchise films that remind us how Dumas was writing the original action blockbusters some 200 years ago. The movie feels like it owes a lot to Nolan’s Dark Knight pictures, then you remember how much Nolan’s Dark Knight pictures owe to The Count Of Monte Cristo.” – North Shore Movies, 01/07/2025
Had a nice chat with Hanna Ali for WBUR’s The Weekender. The subject was movies where snow sets the scene, so I picked Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys, Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Also, shout-outs to Dr. Zhivago, Batman Returns and anything where James Bond is skiing. – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/03/2025
“The entire film is shot from the perspectives of our protagonists, two Black teenagers sent to a brutal, segregated reform school in the Jim Crow-era South. But Nickel Boys doesn’t aspire to be a work of muckraking outrage, instead opting for something more lyrical and experiential. You’re not just in there with the kids, you’re seeing everything through their eyes.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/27/2024
Joined my dear friend Jen Johans to discuss the new Criterion Collection disc of Howard Hawks’ Scarface on the season finale of Watch With Jen. This episode also includes the time S.A. Cosby took a date to see No Country For Old Men, William Boyle talking Paris, Texas and a slightly intoxicated Jed Ayres on Galaxy Quest and The Long Good Friday. – Watch With Jen, 12/27/2024
“By my rough estimate, it is the eleven-billionth adaptation of this material. We’ve seen it all before, but you’ve never seen it looking quite like this. The movie is a triumph of period-accurate production design and silvery, moonlight cinematography. I saw Nosferatu about a month ago and had a blast, though I haven’t thought about it once since leaving the theater.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/24/2024
”So much of the post #MeToo discourse has addressed the inevitable power imbalances inherent in relationships and writer-director Reijn wants you to know she’s read it all. But desire is something messier and more mysterious than can be sorted out by a human resources department. You could even classify Babygirl as a romantic comedy. Sort of.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/24/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 