“It’s a potential parent’s worst-case nightmare of an ugly, unlovable time-suck taking over your life and the sleep-deprived psychosis of a purgatorial existence with a sick, disgusting child that Will. Not. Stop. Crying. Basically, if you’ve ever had a panic attack worrying that you might have knocked up your girlfriend, this is the movie playing in your head.” – Crooked Marquee, 08/04/2023
“Is representation alone enough to merit recommendation? In the summer of 2018, while trying to stay out of the Crazy Rich Asians debate that animates the first and best part of Park’s film, I meekly noted that in a perfect world, people of all races and backgrounds would have their own mediocre romantic comedies. Shortcomings suggests we’re well on our way.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/03/2023
“It makes perfect sense that the gateway to perdition would end up being opened by a bunch of little assholes on TikTok. This nifty, nasty Australian thriller posits demonic possession as the latest stupidly dangerous social media challenge to go viral. It’s an auspicious debut. There’s a bracing meanness to the movie that keeps you guessing where it’s gonna go.” – North Shore Movies, 07/30/2023
“A manhunt movie suffused with melancholy longing for past glories in the face of a morose, mundane present. Disguised as a film noir, it’s actually a precursor to the early 1960s British kitchen sink dramas, one crime plot away from This Sporting Life or Saturday Night And Sunday Morning. I’m guessing this was an important film for a young Mike Leigh.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/28/2023
“A cautionary fable in which nature is dangerously out of balance. In synopsis it probably sounds pretty strident. But the movie never feels like a lecture because Alegría is a filmmaker far more interested in images than dialogue. There’s a mesmerizing rhythm to the picture, juxtaposing magic realist flights of fancy with an almost abstract, poetic sensibility.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
“I like to say that I would watch Nicolas Cage in anything, and it often feels as if I do. Sympathy For The Devil is barely a movie. It’s a nothing-budget quickie Cage appears to have taken as a personal challenge, going bugfuck bonkers amid the somnambulistic surroundings to try and make something memorable by sheer force of will. He very nearly pulls it off.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
“The improbable billion-dollar boom surrounding those small stuffed animals is a fascinating, totally ‘90s tale of irrational exuberance and the rise of the internet. Unfortunately, this perfect storm of sociological circumstances scarcely interests the makers of The Beanie Bubble, a flaccid, grindingly one-note portrait of a craven CEO and the women he wronged.” – North Shore Movies, 07/28/2023
“Released a year after The Bad News Bears, Slap Shot comes from a cultural moment when foul-mouthed sports comedies were how America explained itself to itself. It’s no coincidence that the opening credits unspool over Old Glory, and the country depicted is at a dead end. What else is left to do but get out there on the ice and goon it up for the crowd?” – Crooked Marquee, 07/21/2023
“However disparate in content and tone, Barbie and Oppenheimer are both distinctive visions from filmmakers who have a lot on their minds. You can wait all summer for a blockbuster that’s actually about something, and here come two on the same day. But I don’t recommend trying to do them as a double feature, no matter what Tom Cruise says.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/20/2023
“Allen might be the only primary creative force of the 1970s New Hollywood movement who never became a household name. Hagiographies of that era tend to trend toward blowhard, masculine director types, but it was this prim and proper female cutter who redefined the shapes and sounds of the most fertile decade in American cinema.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/18/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 