For this episode of Watch With Jen, novelist S.A. Cosby selected four of his favorite underdiscussed crime films, Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral, Ted Demme’s Blow, James Gray’s We Own The Night and the Hughes Brothers’ Menace II Society. He and host Jen Johans discuss the cycles of tragic masculinity that figure so powerfully in his work while I make stupid jokes. – Watch With Jen, 06/19/2024
“’Festivals offer the opportunity to use film as a catalyst so that we can all be in one place, in person, to have a conversation and feel that energy in the room,’ said Simmons. ‘It’s important for filmmakers to screen their films in front of an audience that gets to ask them questions, to see the reactions, to get that feedback. That’s an important part of being an artist.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/19/2024
”The inchoate animosity against the Brat Pack that I feel like McCarthy is trying to pin down here was a resentment that the surplus of teen-focused entertainments in the 1980s signified Hollywood’s shift away from adult-oriented material. It goes without saying that nobody in the documentary dares to bring up the fact that most of these movies just weren’t very good.” – North Shore Movies, 06/14/2024
”Sennott is sensational, mapping out the fractured defense mechanisms of a person who’s only comfortable expressing herself through comedy and dark jokes, suddenly stuck in a situation that really isn’t funny anymore. In fact, she’s so good you’ll find herself getting angry at the movie for undercutting her work with the pointless jigsaw puzzle structure.” – North Shore Movies, 06/14/2024
“Ashby’s melancholy sex farce about a habitually horny hairdresser and the comings and goings of California girls is a Restoration comedy transplanted to Beverly Hills. This bawdy tale of musical beds has a gossamer touch hiding a heavy heart. It’s a lot of silly screwing and running around until the last shot of the film sneaks up on you, packing an unexpected wallop.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/14/2024
”While it feels gross to discuss a young woman’s directorial debut with comparisons to her famous father, it appears that as far as handsomely shot hooey with a side of treacly humanism goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I kept wishing The Watchers had been more stylistically distinctive from her dad’s work, so I could feel like a better ally.” – North Shore Movies, 06/07/2024
”Scrappy, confrontational and blessedly unconcerned with respectability politics, these pictures came from a community in crisis. They’re often furious documents, raging against societal and government indifference to a plague that’s powerfully felt even in the films where AIDS is never explicitly mentioned. Celebrate Pride month with six of these trailblazing titles.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/03/2024
“An integral part of my childhood, The Blues Brothers taught me the foundations of American music, introducing me to Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and James Brown at a time when you’d never hear them on the radio. It also taught me that cops, Nazis and good old boys are to be mercilessly mocked and messed with. Especially when you’re on a mission from God.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/31/2024
”There are too many terrific actors in Ezra for the movie to be terrible, but that’s not for lack of trying. A cloying disability drama that feels like it was written two or three decades ago, it bounds from one queasy cliché to another like the most divorced dad fantasy ever. Thanks to the performers, this isn’t a difficult movie to watch, but it leaves an icky aftertaste.” – North Shore Movies, 05/31/2024
”Mortensen shuffles the chronology in initially confusing, continually frustrating ways. I assume he’s attempting to deconstruct certain tropes regarding rape and revenge in Hollywood movies, but in trying to take apart the story’s engine he’s removed it altogether. These are all well-played scenes, and they sit there inert because there’s nothing driving them into each other.” – North Shore Movies, 05/31/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 