“The whole movie looks like it takes place inside a catalog. Yet, depending on your tolerance for sun-dappled montages in which characters ‘live, laugh, love’ to what must have been exorbitantly expensive Led Zeppelin songs, the film goes down surprisingly easily. There’s a Hallmark-y comfort-food quality to Our Friend, but don’t expect it to tell you the truth.” – North Shore Movies, 01/21/2021
“Valadez sidesteps the hard-hitting Sicario style one might expect for such a story in favor of something dreamier and more abstract. There are some images here that will sear themselves into your brain. Everything in the film feels as forlorn as the hollowed-out ghost town Magdalena and Miguel discover where a vibrant community used to be.” – North Shore Movies, 01/21/2021
“To watch The Climb is to remember that comedy can indeed still be directed. The camera works as a partner here with the performers. Director Covino has conceptualized these scenes as complex physical experiences purposely playing around with the audience’s POV to sometimes sublime ends. It is, for lack of a better word, cinema.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/19/2021
“Screenwriter Knight smartly caters the role to everything at which Hathaway excels. Linda is type-A, buttoned-up and wild at heart, over-talking her way through sanctimonious speeches with a rigid physicality that keeps getting distracted and going all slinky whenever her lusty eyes light up. I’d kill to see her play Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.” – North Shore Movies, 01/15/2021
“The new platform launches with a quartet of films belatedly celebrating the 2020 centenary of Federico Fellini, introducing a sparkling new restoration of his playful, penultimate film, Intervista. In conjunction, the Brattlite is offering internet exclusive screenings of two of the director’s earliest efforts, where we can see his signature style beginning to take shape.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/13/2021
“Stallone spills his saga with a breathtaking lack of self-awareness and the undisguised mean streak of the perpetually aggrieved. I suppose there’s something potentially tragic about a less-talented little brother feeling forever outshined, but the documentary is just a giant whine. It’s 73 minutes of Fredo’s ‘I’m smart and I want respect!’ speech from Godfather II.” – North Shore Movies, 01/11/2021
“After fifteen years of hotshot young directors ripping off Alfonso Cuarón’s battle sequences from Children Of Men, apparently now they’ve moved on to stealing the stillbirth scene from Roma? I suppose one can admire the technical bravado required to choreograph the 1917 of crib death while also wondering why such a thing would be necessary.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/07/2021
Just when he thought he was out, breaking news compelled my buddy Blake Howard to revive his podcast so we could discuss the unfathomable idiocy of Donald Trump’s call commanding Georgia’s Secretary of State to commit election fraud. We also talked about The Irishman and Godfather III, because that’s what Blake and I do. – All The President’s Minutes, 01/04/2021
“It’s a horrible holiday mostly spent suffering from the nagging feeling that whatever you’re doing you’re still not having as much fun as you’re supposed to be having, often while surrounded by amateurs who have no idea how to hold their liquor. At least this year sitting on the couch and watching movies is what you should be doing, for the sake of public health!” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 12/30/2020
“It must be swell to live in Jon Stewart’s imaginary America where race, religion and women’s rights are never mentioned and the divisions driving people to the polls are merely matters of educated liberals using big words and eating fancy foods that alienate real, meat-and-potatoes patriots. His deeply incurious satire feels like the worst film of 2004.” – North Shore Movies, 12/26/2020
SPLICED PERSONALITY 