THE CRITICS HAVE SPOKEN!! This weekend, the two Boston film critics groups to which I belong announced their 2015 year end awards! So whose picks are closest to yours? Read all the way to the bottom and see if it's MAD MAX or SPOTLIGHT-- and all the rest. Peruse the results and let me know what you think! The [...]
In an era of rampant consumerism, a bloated blogosphere, Trump-eted messaging through thousands of media outlets, and pervasive psychic indigestion, it might be difficult to unplug and sit still long enough to hear the quiet simple message of the film A SMALL GOOD THING. It is. Local Academy Award-winning filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll (BORN INTO BROTHELS 2004) here directs a [...]
Documentaries continue to be among the strongest, most absorbing and well-crafted pieces of cinema today. Here's yet another just out in theaters and On Demand: STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE, the latest from Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney who has previously applied his critical intelligence and probing eye to Scientology and the Enron scandal. Now he's taken a bite [...]
We are in the golden age of documentaries and a new one just released is an absolute masterwork. LISTEN TO ME MARLON gives us a piercingly intimate look inside the actor who changed everything about acting for all time, Marlon Brando. It turns out that this most enigmatic and provocative of stars left us quite a map to his [...]
I know — it’s summer at the movies, but fear not — there is a way to block those brainless blockbusters with more satisfying alternatives: The 24th annual Woods Hole Film Festival, the oldest on Cape Cod, is set to roll for eight days (July 25 to Aug. 1)! We’re talking more than 100 films showcasing [...]
AMY—the searing new documentary about the incandescent, singer songwriter Amy Winehouse is so viscerally and intellectually alive, it’s as if she’s been conjured up again and we’ve had to suffer the loss of her for the first time. The film by award-winning British filmmaker Asif Kapadia gets to the heart and soul, skin and bones [...]
Here's a double feature at the movies-- you'll love beginning with THE AGE OF ADALINE. The film stars the beautiful Blake Lively as a woman named Adeline Bowman who was born at the beginning of the 20th century and hasn't aged a day since she was 29! Her secret? A car accident during a surprise snowstorm followed by [...]
THE HUNTING GROUND. The title alone suggests a population served up to predators. This is precisely the circumstance on college campuses all over the country, where, according to this shocking and stirring documentary "1 in 5 women in college is sexually assaulted, yet only a fraction of these crimes are reported, and even fewer result in punishment for the perpetrators." How [...]
BOYHOOD: Richard Linklater's extraordinary "12 years a film" feat! He directed the same cast over a dozen years and captured the ephemeral truth about one boy's childhood and growing up in a broken home. It's a "meta" experience for filmgoers who watch the actors and the characters they play, age on camera over time, while the boy played by the soulful Ellar Coltrane--expressive and [...]
Who cares about the OSCARS-- right now. In fact, regional groups like the BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS have been known to have a major influence on which way the wind blows at Oscar time. So listen up fans, cinephiles and Oscar-ites: WE HAVE SPOKEN. We met today at the hippest hotel in town the REVERE HOTEL [...]
