“Cruise was at the height of his movie star powers, yet we’ve never seen him as diminished as he is in Eyes Wide Shut. He’s never looked so short or ill at ease, with Kubrick’s endless re-takes deliberately sanding all the natural charm off his line readings. Kidman towers over him not just physically, but also transforms into an abruptly unattainable object of mystery.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/12/2025
“Nobody in this movie seems to be reacting to what the other person is saying, and the things they say do not correspond with their behavior. Some of these conversations are so strange they border on outsider art. I’ve seen more than one person claim that while watching Ella McCay they worried there might be a gas leak in the theater. The whole film feels concussed.” – North Shore Movies, 12/12/2025
“My favorite film of 2025 is a funny, melancholy marvel of emotionally constipated New England masculinity, full of characters who can only communicate by busting each other’s chops. One of them asks, ‘Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?’ Nothing I saw this year came close.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/11/2025
“Mystery Train is playful that way, using the overlapping incidents in the three stories not to make one of those grandiose ‘everyone is connected’ statements that became an easy way to get invited to the Oscars in the early 2000s, but rather to reflect how differently we all experience the same things. In other words, some people prefer Carl Perkins.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/05/2025
“In whatever form you may find it, Kill Bill remains perhaps the purest distillation of its auteur’s fetishes and fixations, mixing and matching spaghetti westerns, samurai sagas, blaxploitation, kung fu epics and grindhouse rape-revenge pictures into a lavishly produced, cinematically sophisticated smorgasbord of low culture and high style.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 12/04/2025
Had a blast talking with dear friends Blake Howard and Isaac Feldberg about me and Isaac’s favorite film of the year. We discussed how director Carson Lund’s unassuming baseball comedy is really a “twilight of the Massholes” concerned with fading traditions and emotionally constipated New England masculinity. I also told some Bill “Spaceman” Lee stories. – One Heat Minute, 12/03/2025
“Robertson’s book is a gentlemanly tour of late-‘70s Southern California decadence, full of eyebrow-raising anecdotes and delicious name drops. But mostly it’s a love story about two best friends who not-so-secretly want to be each other. Come for the coke binges and gorgeous gals, stay for the lengthy digressions about Sam Fuller and the Staple Singers.” – Crooked Marquee, 12/01/2025
“We get a child’s eye view of this confusing, adult world, and a messy family melodrama only partially understood by our pint-sized protagonist. The unintended consequences of the old man’s superstitions are an echo of all the movie’s intergenerational squabbles, set against a bustling backdrop where tradition and modernity elbow each other for dominance.” – North Shore Movies, 11/27/2025
“The child’s demise is staged with semi-pornographic vigor by Zhao in a way that makes the death scene from E.T. seem subtle and restrained. Buckley puts on such a clinic of guttural screams and heaving, mucus-soaked sobs she’s guaranteed as many golden statuettes as will fit on her mantlepiece when awards season is over next spring.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 11/25/2025
SPLICED PERSONALITY 