“The marketing campaign and awards play have centered on Kidman’s transformation, which is the kind of thing critics are supposed to call ‘brave.’ Honestly I found it all a bit silly and way overdone, wallowing in over-deliberate grotesquerie as some misguided mark of integrity. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of the movie itself.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/11/2019
“For me, the ending’s meaning has always been more elusive, making visceral the sensation of having this story and these people we’ve grown to love over many years violently ripped away forever without a moment’s warning, abruptly plunging us into silence and nothingness. It’s a death scene alright, but we’re the ones who got whacked.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/09/2019
“As the title might have tipped you off, it isn’t exactly heavy on plot. This largely improvised film has the loose rhythms of day-to-day life, with the director hanging back and regarding his characters in mostly unobtrusive medium shots. A lot of it could pass for a documentary, until upon reflection you realize how carefully Esparza’s set up his story beats.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/04/2019
“The movie presents common knowledge with gasps of shock and awe. It’s like getting a breathless lecture on something you lived through from someone who just learned about it yesterday. McKay never settles on a through-line. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened, shuffled all out of order and repeated a few times extra loud for the cheap seats.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018
“The crackerjack ensemble makes a meal out of Baldwin’s prose. Jenkins loves letting his characters speak directly into the lens, lending a gutsy emotional immediacy while James Laxton’s breathtaking cinematography grants even the tackiest 1970s orange and yellow decor an ethereal glow. It’s an achingly beautiful film, and so terribly sad.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018
“The Mule ambles along in the unhurried fashion of Clint’s easygoing Americana road pictures like Honkytonk Man or A Perfect World. Always a more thoughtful filmmaker than his often boneheaded public statements would lead you to believe, Eastwood fashions the picture into a sneaky examination of white privilege. There’s a lot going on under the hood here.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018
“Julia Roberts tells people off the way Steve McQueen drives or Al Pacino yells. Nobody does it better. So I can’t for the life of me understand why Hedges would discard all the carefully observed family drama and devote the back half of the picture to a forehead-smacking thriller plot that’s both incomprehensible and inane.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/25/2018
