“While we’re all currently suffering through the most tediously sexless era of American cinema since the Hays Code, writer-director Michael Mohan’s cheeky erotic thriller harkens back to a happier, hornier time of Skinemax After Dark offerings and unrated VHS director’s cuts. What a pleasure to watch serious craft unencumbered by seriousness of purpose.” – North Shore Movies, 09/13/2021
“It might be Scorsese’s most manic movie, disjunctively doubling back through dissolves so we’re seeing things from multiple angles at once. The camera flips on its side or upside down altogether, with Van Morrison’s wheezy, queasy ‘TB Sheets’ percolating over and over on the soundtrack, his wailing harmonica standing in for the ambulance’s siren.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/10/2021
“Another one of Schrader’s hothouse character studies cooked up from the former film critic’s career-long fixations on Bresson’s Diary Of A Country Priest, The Searchers, samurai rituals and suicidal ideation. Some will no doubt roll their eyes at the repetitions but for me they felt like hearing an old classic rock band launch into a greatest hits medley.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/09/2021
“The fellas are long past the age when such shenanigans are still considered cute. Without any special pleading on behalf of these cavemen, Pollono does a fine and often very funny job of illustrating their limited means of emotional expression. Busting chops and breaking balls are the primary modes of communication, with violence not very far down the list.” – North Shore Movies, 09/09/2021
“It’s of a piece with recent Binoche pictures like Olivier Assayas’ Clouds Of Slis Maria and Claire Denis’ Let The Sunshine In, as the iconic actress confronts her advancing years head-on, a key component of these films being her struggle to accept that you can’t be Juliette Binoche forever… though she’s been making a pretty good go of it so far.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/02/2021
“Mostly presented without sound, these clips provide tantalizing glimpses of a strikingly modern, practically cosmopolitan Afghanistan that’s a stark contrast to the ruins we’ve been seeing on the news for the past two decades. The movies have an endearingly amateurish quality, while the filmmakers provide hair-raising anecdotes about their productions.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/24/2021
“Don Rugoff figured out how to sell an entire generation of uptown sophisticates on difficult foreign language pictures and scrappy American indies, turning art films into cultural events. He changed the way movies are marketed and made, and I’d never heard of him until last week. Rugoff died penniless in 1989, a figure forgotten by film history. Until now.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 08/19/2021
“As a director he’s one of the few Hollywood natives who knows how to shoot Middle America without making it look like a beer commercial. We also tend to forget what a powerful performer Penn can be when he cares about the material. The star spent the first half of his career wishing he’d played Ratso Rizzo and now he clearly can’t wait to be Willy Loman.” – North Shore Movies, 08/19/2021
Honored to have been called in for duty on the latest installment of Blake Howard’s Zodiac podcast, discussing the cinematic hall of mirrors during the Dirty Harry scene in David Fincher’s magnum opus. Other guests on the episode include the film’s screenwriter James Vanderbilt, co-star John Carroll Lynch and my old drinking buddy Danny Bowes. – Zodiac: Chronicle, 08/14/2021
“Exploding onscreen with a modern dance troupe’s syncopated movements in front of a pulsating pink sun, scenes spill out in fragments that skip back and forth in time, on beat with the music. Ema is instantly mesmerizing. Larraín forces us to put together the shattered shards of a story as it surges along, like we’re one of the movie’s many dance partners.” – North Shore Movies, 08/13/2021
SPLICED PERSONALITY 