Joined friends Justin and Laura Khoo for our own private awards show celebrating the best films and performances of 2023, plus some other silly categories like Best Lisp and a lot more Nyad discussion than I think anybody was expecting. Their one-award-per-film rule prompted some surprising choices and kept this from becoming The Oppenheimer Hour. – Cows In The Field, 03/08/2024
“There are six credited screenwriters on Peter Farrelly’s latest picture, as well at two more writers credited with the story. That’s a lot of paychecks for a script that feels like it was knocked out in an afternoon. As a critic who has expressed a preference for the filmmaker’s earlier, funnier movies, Ricky Stanicky serves as a reminder to be careful what you wish for.” – North Shore Movies, 03/08/2024
“If you ask me, Margot Robbie delivered one of 2023’s most skillful turns as Barbie’s titular toy, but the Academy has always shied away from honoring comedic performances in leading roles. The real bias here is a slant toward self-seriousness. Comic timing as deft as Robbie’s stands no chance against Carey Mulligan dying of cancer with a mid-Atlantic accent.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/07/2024
”Coolidge restages and reexamines the night when, as a 16-year-old boarding school student in 1962, she was raped by an acquaintance while visiting New York. As we watch the movie being made, we’re also witnessing an artist taking back control of an evening during which it was violently wrested away from her, finding catharsis in the act of creation.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/07/2024
Had an absolute blast with dear friends Blake Howard, Jen Johans and Rob Belushi discussing director Martin Brest’s 1988 buddy comedy classic and afternoon cable perennial. We talk about cigarettes, the parenting skills of Chicago spirit animal Dennis Farina, more cigarettes, the greatness of John Ashton, De Niro’s superior phone skills and still more cigarettes. – One Heat Minute, 03/07/2024
”And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time before I see another film as stubbornly soporific as Netflix’s dreary sci-fi drama Spaceman. There’s about 20 minutes of story here stretched out to nearly two hours, the movie idling alongside the spacecraft. This is the gloomiest, most humorless Sandler picture yet, and I’m including the one about 9/11.” – North Shore Movies, 02/29/2024
”A cavalcade of gags and stunts with the zany cartoon logic of Bugs and company at their best, flinging the characters around in antic set pieces that first defy the laws of physics then play them for unexpected payoffs. Shot in high contrast black-and-white, the movie has the undercranked aesthetic of an old-timey silent short revved up for TikTok attention spans.” – North Shore Movies, 02/29/2024
”Garrone’s Gomorrah was distinguished by a deeply researched examination of mob mechanics. He’s taken the same approach here, culling the screenplay from actual experiences of Senegalese migrants. What’s most horrifying is not the brutal desert crossing, but rather the vicious underground economy that has sprung up around these needy travelers.” – North Shore Movies, 02/23/2024
“A fun example of how cool and influential a film can be without being particularly good. The existential moonshiner melodrama stuck around for so many years at the bottom of double bills, distributors took to calling it ‘the Gone With The Wind of drive-ins.’ Thunder Road was a counterculture B-picture before anyone really knew what those were yet.” – Crooked Marquee, 02/23/2024
“Forensic auteurism may be a fool’s errand with collaborators as close as the Coens, nevertheless I think we now know which brother wrote the dildo joke in Burn After Reading. Drive-Away Dolls is a filthy, high-spirited farce that presumably sets some sort of record for the number of sex toys featured in a film released by a major studio subsidiary.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/22/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 