””It’s interesting to think about a time when Hollywood made movies for adults,’ explains Tamm. ‘What does it say about the end of the 20th century that 25 years on, we’re not making movies like this anymore? Is that necessarily a good thing? I don’t know. There are some deeper, thornier questions in these films that mainstream movies aren’t asking anymore.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/10/2024
”Better than it probably should be but still not very good. There’s a comfort food quality to this stroll down memory lane. It feels like one of those sitcom reunion movies that networks used to produce back in the ‘80s, coasting on familiar faces and a catchy theme song. It’ll play best on Netflix, where most people will be watching it while doing something else.” – North Shore Movies, 07/02/2024
”Rushed and overwritten, with West constantly putting the cart before the horse to shoehorn as many homages and semiotic asides as he can cram into a given scene. But such self-reflexive wankery only goes so far unless you’ve got something to say, and MaXXXine is one of those movies that confuses talking about big ideas with actually having them.” – North Shore Movies, 07/01/2024
“Unfulfilled longing runs the circle ‘round in Jacques Demy’s enchanting, heartsick 1961 debut, a film in which — as the song goes — everybody needs somebody to love, even when they don’t love you back. To Demy, a poet of heartache, unrequited love remains an essential and inevitable element of the human condition; the most wonderful, horrible part of being alive.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/28/2024
”What’s refreshing is that there aren’t any overt lessons being learned here. This trip isn’t going to change either of their lives, no matter how bad the traffic. What Hall’s film captures is something far more important and elusive. It’s about how an unexpected human connection, even one as fleeting as a cab ride, can deepen the way we see the world around us.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/27/2024
“As with Baker’s plays, the silences are long and the dialogue oblique. Janet Planet can occasionally be a frustrating picture. The playwright’s penchant for real-time longueurs doesn’t always translate as well to the screen as it plays onstage, where being boring on purpose carries with it an entirely different electricity. But the movie has a canny, cumulative effect.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/27/2024
”Schrader and Springsteen have always shared simpatico sensibilities, wearing their small town, religious upbringings on their sleeves. The alienated loners driving all night on albums like Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Nebraska could easily be Paul Schrader protagonists, and the plot of Blue Collar sounds like something out of a Springsteen song.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/26/2024
“Nichols’ heavily fictionalized adaptation plays up the romantic grandeur of Lyon’s photographs, his camera caressing the brooding visage of Austin Butler as a reckless ne’er-do-well so stupid he instigates a police chase and then runs out of gas. It’s a pretty good metaphor for the movie itself, which is full of striking images that never really go anywhere.” – North Shore Movies, 06/21/2024
“Boomer rock docs have calcified into such a boilerplate, bulletproof formula that as a critic I often have trouble finding anything to say about them. If you like the artist, you’ll enjoy the movie. But even die-hard fans might find Disciple a bit excessive. Do we really need a 147-minute documentary about the third-best guitarist in the E Street Band?” – North Shore Movies, 06/21/2024
Friends Blake Howard, Scout Tafoya and I all contributed essays to the upcoming Imprint Collection Film Focus: Harvey Keitel box set, so Blake got us on the mic to talk about the actor’s singular career and his honorary Catholic status, as well as the stubborn integrity and artistic fearlessness Keitel came to epitomize during the 1990s indie film revolution. – One Heat Minute, 06/20/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 