“Reichardt has been teaching film at Bard College since 2006, and her bone dry dismantling of macho heist picture fantasies got me and a friend imagining an instructor who’s had it up to here with the crime drama fixations of her young male students. Without knowing for sure, I’d be willing to guess that Kelly Reichardt has some pretty strong feelings about the movie Heat.” – North Shore Movies, 10/24/2025
“As enervating a movie experience as you’ll have this year. Cartoonishly reductive and crassly fictionalized in the manner of most formula Hollywood biopics, yet stubbornly absent any of the genre’s cheeseball satisfactions. It wears its joylessness as a point of pride, drowning in a dour self-importance that reflects poorly on both the filmmakers and their subject.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/23/2025
“Del Toro has always had more affinity for his monsters than men, and Elordi’s tender creature is so much more interesting than Isaac’s off-putting, one-note doctor that the movie doesn’t come alive until he does, which is unfortunately over an hour into the 149-minute feature. Frankenstein is as visually extravagant as it is dramatically undercooked.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/21/2025
“The nice thing about living in one of the greatest movie cities in the world is that there are more than 40 horror flicks you can go see on a giant screen with a sound system that blows away any setup you have at home. Besides, there’s something healthy about screaming along with strangers. It reminds us that we’re all in this together.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/21/2025
“The 89-year-old Allen’s debut novel is tangy and bitter, slipping an amusingly corrosive one-liner into just about every paragraph. The man is still a joke machine, and he’s at his funniest when he lets his contempt hang out like it does here, taking potshots at both his loser protagonist and the Manhattan culture vultures who might be right to consider him beneath them.” – North Shore Movies, 10/20/2025
My buddy Blake Howard called from the Adelaide Film Festival, where he’d just seen director Mike Figgis’ all-access documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. We discussed our love for FFC and how we wish he could have made a dozen movies with Aubrey Plaza. We also talked about what a pain in the ass Shia LaBeouf seems to be. – One Heat Minute, 10/16/2025
“Luca Guadagnino’s entertainingly trashy provocation pushes the audience’s buttons with fat, clumsy thumbs, tackling issues of race, elitism, power dynamics and consent without having anything substantive or even coherent to say about any of them. Still, there’s a naughty, irresponsible swagger to the picture that’s undeniably fun to watch.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/15/2025
“Every scene in director Mary Bronstein’s sophomore effort is a mini-anxiety attack, rattling in extreme closeups on star Rose Byrne while a cacophonous world roars at and around her, shrieking reminders of her shortcomings as a mother and a human being. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You would probably be unwatchable if it weren’t so horrifically funny.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/15/2025
“Pontecorvo said he wanted the movie to feel like ‘a stolen historical document’ and his groundbreaking appropriation of newsreel techniques blurs the lines between documentary and fiction filmmaking to dizzying effect. Early release prints had a disclaimer informing audiences that no actual news footage was used in the picture. That’s still kind of hard to believe.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/10/2025
“Though it’s a major studio release with big stars, Roofman has the low-key vibe of an indie from the early aughts. The 35mm cinematography and easy authenticity make it feel like something you’d have seen at Sundance around the time when the film is set. Cianfrance has a real eye for everyday life. The places in his movies look like people actually live there.” – North Shore Movies, 10/10/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 