“Genial fuckarounds for the genuinely gifted Sandler and his moderately talented posse, these Happy Madison films felt so insulting when you had to make the actual effort to drive somewhere and hand over your hard-earned money to see them, but now that they just pop up unsolicited on Netflix I suppose there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.” – North Shore Movies, 10/07/2020
“Director Garrett Bradley does something fascinating with all this home video footage. Instead of presenting a straight chronology or clearly delineated flashbacks, she and editor Gabriel Rhodes have collapsed past and present into one big continuous reverie, allowing snippets of scenes old and new to soar away on a gorgeous solo piano score.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/07/2020
“For more than two decades the Boston Underground Film Festival fest has been screening the wildest, weirdest and most outré offerings for area audiences in a self-described ‘annual sensory bacchanalia from beyond the mainstream.’ Better late than never, this year’s celebration is finally happening with a little help from their friends.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 10/07/2020
“Despite the delightful counterintuitive casting of America’s mom Phylicia Rashad as a mad scientist, it’s a flat, cheap-looking film with borderline hilarious ‘science-fiction’ props, like a web of produce department plastic draped over the head of our protagonist while a bank of computer modules beep and blink like the navigation system in The Black Hole.” – North Shore Movies, 10/06/2020
“Art is how we cope. It helps us heal, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a more beautiful exploration of this process than Kirsten Johnson’s prankishly funny and enormously moving documentary about caring for her father as he struggles with dementia and their family prepares for the inevitable. Sounds like barrel of laughs, I know. But trust me on this one.” – North Shore Movies, 10/02/2020
My fifth dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Orson Welles, Filip Jan Rymsza and Bob Murawski’s Hopper/Welles, Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple, Jia Zhangke’s Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue, Philippe Garrel’s The Salt Of Tears and Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love.
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“RoxFilm has put together the most aggressive online event schedule I’ve seen since COVID-19 sent us all to our rooms. With daily lunchtime script readings featuring local actors and writers, filmmaker hangouts and even a virtual dance party, the 22nd annual Roxbury International Film Festival is determined to keep us together even if we must be apart.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/29/2020
Had a great time sitting in with the delightful Jen Johans on Watch With Jen & Friends. We talked about the awkwardness of Jen being the only girl in her high school class who had a crush on Robert De Niro and then the conversation kept coming back to the Michael Douglas film Disclosure for some reason, which neither of us has seen. – Watch With Jen & Friends, 09/29/2020
“An extraordinary piece of work and one of the most quietly radical in a career spanning six decades. Wiseman wants us to reflect on all the essential roles that public institutions play in our daily lives. It’s the movie’s view that cities have certain responsibilities to their citizens and that this is necessary and noble work, even when it inevitably falls short.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/25/2020
My fourth dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks, Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Tsai Ming-liang’s Days and Mohammad Reza Aslani’s The Chess Game Of The Wind.
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