PATRIOTS DAY--Pointless. If you lived through the Boston Marathon bombings, nothing compares. For all its good intentions and attempts at verisimilitude, this film adds nothing and mutes the impact of that tragic week in Boston's history. It also traffics in some pretty annoying cliches: Boston cops are, apparently, the most foul-mouthed in the country; and only the same roster of actors [...]
If you're still looking for that perfect gift for someone you love who loves the arts, I am passing along this 2016 Holiday Gift Guide, itself a gift from WBUR's The ARTery writers-- and I am proud to be one! This annual gift guide has several stockings full of suggestions in every discipline [...]
Hold onto your hats-- and your eardrums-- and prepare to laugh yourself silly!! Meryl Streep does it again, this time in a bravura "comedia-tura" performance as a real life "coloratura-challenged" heiress with a passion for grand opera, but no talent: FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS. Stephen Frears once again turns his attention to a strong female character [...]
WIN complimentary passes to the Fathom Event: MET SUMMER ENCORE SERIES! Enter to win by e-mailing fathomeventsboston@gmail.com with (name of the opera event/JOYCE) in the subject line. Please send your full name and e-mail address! 5 admit 2 winners will be selected for each opera and emailed their complimentary passes. Passes will be valid at Showcase Cinemas in Lowell [...]
One day we won't need a FLICKS4CHICKS contest, but you may have perhaps noticed that it keeps raining men at the movies. From macho superheroes and shoot 'em up cop dramas, to frat boy hi-jinks, comedic buddy bromances, and sci-fi adventure films it's mostly men in the drivers' seats, in front of [...]
Where would we be without two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Sally Field and another of her indelible, quirky, wholly committed, utterly endearing performances? One glimpse of Field in the opening sequence as Doris Miller crying at her mother's funeral, wearing cat eye glasses and a big Minnie Mouse bow wrapped around a towering bun of hair-- and she had me at [...]
THE 2016 OSCARS are upon us and I thought I'd weigh in on a few films I'd been mum on-- in case you were wondering for what and whom to root! ROOM: Nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay is a compactly explosive film about a horrifying situation: a young woman kidnapped, impregnated, and kept prisoner by a sexual predator-- and [...]
It's a quiet time of year for movie releases after the blockbusters of summer and the Oscar contenders of fall. It's the perfect time to think "silents." We can't actually hear them sighing in ecstasy, but it isn't hard to imagine from those shimmering "pictures" what was happening on the "silver screen" back in the early days of film when actual silver was [...]
What an intense week. I cannot write anything else before expressing how heartbroken I was to learn that brilliant actor Alan Rickman and musical icon David Bowie died--both Londoners, both at age 69 of cancer. Bowie was an artistic visionary and sonic adventurer who cut an endlessly original and challenging swathe through the musical landscape. We find him [...]
A flurry of fine films has just descended on the big screen in the last few weeks, almost too many to take in; but I did my best and here are my TOP FIVE FILMS of the year, some of which aren't due out until Christmas! 1) THE REVENANT-- A stunning 156 minute saga by award-winning Mexican director Alejandro G. Inarritu (BIRDMAN) starring Leonardo DiCaprio [...]
