“The irony should not be lost on anyone that the freshest movie in multiplexes right now is the seventh installment of a decades-old franchise based on a 1960s television program. But as its star reminded us last summer, ‘It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.’ The tireless Tom Cruise and company have outdone themselves again. This is a preposterously entertaining picture.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/14/2023
“Adele Lim’s gleefully vulgar directorial debut sends four friends on a raunchy road trip to China, toppling every prim and proper Asian stereotype along the way. Joy Ride is an awfully generic title, but I suppose it makes sense when you learn that Lim and co-screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong originally called it The Joy Fuck Club.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 07/06/2023
“Delpy is so much fun as the left-field femme fatale that you can’t help but wish the film had pushed things even further. (Anyone who’s seen Hudson Hawk knows Richard E. Grant can go a lot higher than over-the-top.) It’s capably directed by TV vet Troughton, but what the screenplay needed was a baroque stylist to really lean into all the lurid trickery.” – North Shore Movies, 07/06/2023
“Look beyond the big chains and you’ll find a few precious, old-fashioned independent movie houses committed to bringing the best contemporary art cinema and popcorn entertainment to the community. It’s a thriving scene full of fun repertory programming and more film festivals than one person could possibly have enough time to attend. We’ve tried.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/30/2023
“The key to Hackman’s genius is that he was always one of our most vulnerable actors. Beneath that gruff, macho bluster lurks an almost child-like sensitivity. He bruises so easily. Screenwriter Sharp’s dialogue is the gold standard of exhausted, Watergate-era fatalism. Few films embody a gloriously bummed-out era of American cinema better than Night Moves.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/30/2023
“Almost nothing in the picture works. The action sequences are a smeary hodgepodge of poorly composited greenscreen effects and weightless, rubbery digital doubles being tossed around without consequence. There’s no snap to these scenes, none of the unexpected cause-and-effect punchlines that make the earlier movies so much fun to watch.“ – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/29/2023
On this Patreon subscriber exclusive episode of The Decade Project, my bubby Blake Howard and I talk about how the Coen brothers’ melancholy masterpiece Inside Llewyn Davis holds up ten years later. It’s probably my favorite of their films, but I couldn’t bear to watch it again until last week, for embarrassingly personal reasons I get into on the podcast. – One Heat Minute, 06/29/2023
“Gather ‘round kids, and let grandpa here tell you about these things called comedies. See, strangers used to congregate in theaters and laugh at the amusing situations in which movie stars found themselves. Most of these scenarios involved getting laid, or at least wanting to very badly. Alas, this desire has all but vanished from mainstream American cinema.” – North Shore Movies, 06/28/2023
“Asteroid City is an ingeniously constructed hall of mirrors that collapses in on itself like a house of cards, all the while asking big questions about the mysteries of the universe and the ways in which we use science and art to make sense of a cruel world we cannot understand. This is Wes Anderson’s most philosophical film, and one of his very best.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/23/2023
“Welcoming The Embrace provides a crash course in our city’s astonishingly rich Black cultural history. It’s a terrific way to launch a celebration of diverse voices and stories from Boston and beyond, doubling as a mission statement for the festival itself. My only complaint about the fleet, 42-minute documentary is that it doesn’t run twice as long.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/20/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 