“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
“I’m not sure any actor has flown closer to the sun than Brando did here. The more powerfully Paul attempts to assert himself, the more pathetic he becomes. The star goes to emotional places so vulnerable and humiliating other performers spend their entire careers never getting near the same neighborhood. She’s naked, he’s exposed.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/16/2023
“Keaton’s stiff, mechanical movements in that cumbersome suit have been replaced by smooth CGI stuntwork that’s especially absurd considering this is supposed to be a 71-year-old man. Worst of all, his Batman hasn’t been written as the kinky weirdo of Burton’s movies. He’s just another retro nostalgia prop in a film overwhelmed by references and in-jokes.” – North Shore Movies, 06/16/2023
“It’s disconcerting to see big stars like Jon Hamm and Tina Fey in something this cheap and thrown together. Slattery’s sophomore effort is distractingly incompetent on a basic production level. It looks like a student short full of threadbare sets, sloppy signage and some of the most laughably unconvincing TV chyrons I’ve ever seen in a film.” – North Shore Movies, 06/16/2023
“Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Party Girl and Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation didn’t drum up much money at the box office during their initial releases, but both became almost instant cult classics that epitomized a very specific moment of Gen X cool. During my undergrad days as a video store clerk, we couldn’t keep these tapes on the shelves.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/16/2023
“You keep worrying that the screenplay will resort to some dumb misunderstanding or try to gin up the stakes with one of them doing something stupid and ugly. But this is a movie about nice people in a tricky situation doing their best to be honest and kind, which is somehow so much more suspenseful than any hypothetical bodice-ripper.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/09/2023
“The first twenty minutes are extraordinary. The last twenty are infuriating. In between them sprawl another hundred minutes or so of swirling, kaleidoscopic adventure and some of the wildest animated visuals ever put to the big screen, albeit bogged down at times by some baffling storytelling choices. Caveat emptor: This is only half a movie.” – North Shore Movies, 06/06/2023
“The wily and surprising Sanctuary reminds me of independent films from an earlier era, back when stuff you’d see at Sundance wasn’t as concerned about sending the right social messages and instead got messy and mixed things up a little. This isn’t a dirty or explicit picture. If anything, it might be a little too tasteful in that regard. But it’s a fun film for grown-ups.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/01/2023
“The affectations and allusions are entirely deliberate. Leone, his film critic pal Dario Argento and a hotshot young director named Bernardo Bertolucci spent months binging every ancient Hollywood oater they could find while coming up with the story, stealing scenes and scenarios willy-nilly. Once Upon A Time In The West isn’t just any old Western, it’s all of them.” – Crooked Marquee, 05/26/2023
“The afterparty is the brainchild of Identical Cousins, who have held similar Peaks shindigs in the past. They’re calling the Crystal Ballroom event ‘a mini-festival of fan art, an immersive space where we inhabit the dream together. We want folks to hear the wind, pass through the woods and slip through the curtains backstage to another dimension.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 05/26/2023
SPLICED PERSONALITY 