“Paying little lip service to genre conventions, Mann’s electrifying, experimental cyber-thriller is an almost abstract symphony of sound and color smeared across the screen in crackling, corrupted digital cinematography meant to mirror the twitchy surveillance state in which its stealthy characters operate. Blackhat is like a Stan Brakhage movie with gunfights.” – Crooked Marquee, 03/01/2022
“A curious bit of exploitation movie archeology, this recently rediscovered collection of scenes shot in 1984 without sound was painstakingly reassembled with a new screenplay written and recorded around what could be surmised from lip-reading and best guesses. It’s an affectionate example of-slash-tribute to Reagan Era grindhouse garbage.” – North Shore Movies, 02/25/2022
“A lot of the time it feels like an old vaudevillian revue, and the charm of this 1976 sleeper hit is in these corny, vintage comedy stylings bumping up against bare boobs, explicit lyrics and a production number full of dancing dildos. It’s a dirty movie but not a smutty one, sunny and ebullient about sex in a manner that would quickly vanish from Hollywood entertainments.” – North Shore Movies, 02/25/2022
“In obnoxiously flashy films like Atonement and Anna Karenina, it often seemed like there was never a movie moment Joe Wright couldn’t gaudily over-direct, yet somehow his first full-bore Hollywood musical features some of his most restrained work, keeping a close-up intimacy with the characters as occasional ballets break out in the background.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/23/2022
“There’s a touchingly autumnal sense of diminishment in El Dorado, explicitly addressing infirmity and old age in ways unthinkable for these stars just a few years prior. These characters are constantly coming up short. The movie ends not with our heroes riding off into the sunset, but hobbling on crutches, laughing and limping their way into legend.” – Crooked Marquee, 02/18/2022
“Birney and Audley are analog filmmakers at heart, and their dazzling dreamscapes are conjured out of papier mâché, puppets, stop-motion animation and primitive cinematic sleight-of-hand dating back to the silent era. They shot the movie on video but transferred it to 16mm film to get just the right grainy texture, adding little vinyl hisses and pops to the soundtrack.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/16/2022
“An exercise in pure craftsmanship, master director Steven Soderbergh’s latest doodle for a streaming service finds the filmmaker in down-and-dirty Haywire mode again, distilling a hooky idea into 89 minutes of all-killer, no-filler entertainment. It’s the kind of movie people like me are talking about when we whine that they don’t make ’em like this anymore.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2022
“But movies being what they are these days and Branagh being Branagh, our sleuth is significantly slimmed down and must secretly be suffering. Seems like every other film now has to be ‘about trauma.’ Thus, in the most inadvertently hilarious addition to Christie’s canon, Branagh begins with a tragic, black-and-white origin story for his silly mustache.” – North Shore Movies, 02/14/2022
“Trier is heavily indebted to the French New Wave, and this picture’s most beguiling moment arrives after Julie and Eivind first meet, when all of Oslo seems to freeze in its tracks as she sprints through the stilled streets, giddy with the first flush of infatuation. But eventually the world has to start moving again. It always does. That’s what the movie’s about.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/10/2022
“They have great voices. Slate’s got that unexpectedly versatile baby doll squeak, which harmonizes quite nicely with Day’s exasperated rasp. These two *sound* funny together, which allows them to pull off the sometimes sorry dialogue. I laughed out loud at more than a few lines that are clearly not funny on paper, just because of how the stars said them.” – North Shore Movies, 02/10/2022
SPLICED PERSONALITY 