“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
“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
