”A sumptuously photographed, pansexual sleaze-feast with a thing for mood lighting and bodily fluids. When the movie’s really cooking it plays like Pasolini’s Teorema by way of Cruel Intentions. This is all fine, disreputable fun until what might be the stupidest, most misguided ending I’ve seen since… well, since Fennell’s previous picture, Promising Young Woman.” – North Shore Movies, 11/21/2023
LUNCHPAIL AMERICANA AND MYTH: MICHAEL CIMINO’S THE DEER HUNTER
“America’s loss of innocence writ large – and I mean really large – The Deer Hunter is a work of such self-conscious, chest-thumping grandiosity that it’s easy to see why the film has fallen out of favor in some circles. Yet there’s something elemental about the movie’s boys’ adventure machismo, a primal force that overpowers Cimino’s more cartoonish flourishes.” – Crooked Marquee, 11/17/2023
MAY DECEMBER
”Haynes stages their scenes together with the two side-by-side, staring into mirrors, so we can better see Moore’s physicality bleeding into Portman’s. May December belongs to a rich tradition of great directors doing Persona riffs, like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Robert Altman’s 3 Women. But there’s more going on here than mimicry and homage.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/16/2023
THANKSGIVING
”What’s so disappointing about Thanksgiving is that Roth has scrapped the sleazy, Reagan-era aesthetic of his original Grindhouse trailer and instead made an homage to a much lamer and tamer era of slasher movies. This is a crappy Scream knockoff with bad New England accents. It might as well be called I Know What You Did Last November.” – North Shore Movies, 11/16/2023
DREAM SCENARIO
“It’s a fantastic premise, but it hasn’t been fully fleshed out into a story. Writer-director Borgli’s previous picture, the Norwegian import Sick Of Myself, ran out of places to go after about an hour. Faced with a similar impasse, Dream Scenario settles for being a facile satire of celebrity cancel culture. You can feel the film’s ambitions shrinking as it goes along.” – North Shore Movies, 11/16/2023
THE MARVELS

”Anyway, I’m assured this is very different from the 32 previous Marvel movies because this time they’re looking for a glowing magic space bracelet instead of a glowing magic space rock glove. Entirely different accessory, but the movie still ends with everyone trying to close an interdimensional portal, because sometimes you gotta play the hits.” – North Shore Movies, 11/10/2023
SELLING THE YACHT WAS PAINFUL: STEVEN SODERBERGH ON GODFREY REGGIO’S ONCE WITHIN A TIME
”’Godfrey is a fun hang, absolutely. But I tap out fast,’ Soderbergh admits. ‘It’s so abstract. I leave inspired, excited and confused. It’s one of those things where I go, ‘I’ll never see the UFO, but I believe he saw it.’ You go with that. You go with the resume, which is absolutely unique among American filmmakers. With each film he creates a new grammar.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/08/2023
WHAT HAPPENS LATER
“For most folks, I’d imagine the idea of being stuck in an airport overnight with an ex-girlfriend sounds more like a horror movie than a romantic comedy. But Ryan’s going after something a little bumpier and bittersweet. This interestingly confused picture roots through some of her more ambivalent feelings about the genre she came to define in the 1990s.” – North Shore Movies, 11/08/2023
RUSTIN
”Smiling wide and showing off the missing teeth a Mississippi cop knocked out of his mouth in 1948, Rustin holds his omnipresent cigarette like a film noir femme fatale and revs up the room like Little Richard. Domingo is so much fun to watch in the role, the supporting cast doesn’t so much share scenes with him as they try to stay out of his way.” – North Shore Movies, 11/03/2023
FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE: RESTORED AND UNCUT AT THE BRATTLE
“Unavailable for years except via bootlegs and old, out-of-print Miramax DVDs, director Chen Kaige’s magisterial 1993 melodrama Farewell My Concubine is finally back on the big screen, celebrating its 30th anniversary at the Brattle Theatre in a spectacular new uncut 4K digital restoration. Even if you’ve seen the movie, you’ve never seen it like this.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/03/2023








