June has arrived, and also it’s about to end, the month-long worldwide celebrations of my birthday winding down* as I settle into my new age-number and look ahead to the rest of the year**. Thus, this, my Best Things halftime report, expanded once more from merely a ranking of film and TV to include music, … Continue reading
In retrospect, this piece I wrote about Damsel for The Week might be a little unkind to poor Parson Henry; he is indeed pathetic, and he is in distress, but he’s genuine and honest and frankly every other character in the film takes advantage of him or otherwise abuses him without thinking twice about it. It’s nigh-impossible … Continue reading
I’m in a semi-depressive funk on my birthday, so I’m going to force my way through by thinking of The Year of Spectacular Men, a delightful gem of a film where the Deutch family – Madelyn, Zoey, and Lea* – assemble like the Avengers and make us cackle at rom-com done well. 2018 is Zoey’s year: … Continue reading
A couple weeks back, I had the great pleasure of speaking with a young singer-songwriter out of Nashville, Erin Rae, on the strength of the interview I conducted with Lillie Mae out of Boston Calling last month. (Mae. Rae. Try not to get confused.) Like Lillie, Erin is a blast to speak with. Also like … Continue reading
Netflix sure does make a whole lot of original movies, and a whole lot of them sure do…likely never show up in your recommendations at all. In some cases, that’s for the best, because they’re awful (a’la The Incredible Jessica James, a bad movie starring a really great actress). In other cases, you end up … Continue reading
Look: I fucking despised Ari Aster’s Hereditary. I don’t care whose movie it’s supposed to be, or whose perspective we’re supposed to take*, or how the movie sets up its climactic reveals. It’s never what a movie is about that’s a problem. It’s how it’s about it. Hereditary, one of the most misleadingly named movies … Continue reading
It’s June. “Best Of (So Far)” list time. About a third of the blurbs on Paste Magazine‘s June ’18 list have my name on them, and of those that don’t, there are a handful I don’t agree with: I think Avengers: Infinity War is an exhausting slog, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is garbage, and Hereditary … Continue reading
I don’t know if there’s a way not to lay this on too thick, but, my dudes, the human beings of Westworld are straight up doodoo. Seriously, in this show, we’re terrible, horrible, no good, very bad flesh and blood entities. Except for Felix. Felix is kinda like Jesus in Westworld, only when he dies, he definitely isn’t … Continue reading
I’m surprised that this is a hot-ish take (which I guess makes it a lukewarm-ish take, right?), but: Ocean’s 8 is a superior gender-flipped reboot to most other gender-flipped reboots released to date, chief among them being Ghostbusters ’16, a movie I do not have a positive relationship with. Look, the plain damn truth is that these … Continue reading
Oh, hey, shocker, I happily wrote capsule blurbs for Hale County This Morning, This Evening and Crime + Punishment for Paste Magazine‘s “best docs of ’18 to date” list, man, bet you’re all real fucking surprised about that. I don’t know what else you want me to say. They’re great movies. Hale County This Morning, This Evening in particular … Continue reading
For clarity’s sake, all of the things I say about Brett Haley in the intro to my review of his latest, Hearts Beat Loud, is absolutely true: I’ve never spoken to him one on one, but I have seen him speak, twice, two years in a row, at Independent Film Festival Boston, where in both appearances he … Continue reading
I’m interested in seeing how The Break with Michelle Wolf picks up in quality, but really, I’m interested in learning how many people actually tune in to watch it. It’s a good show; maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but the first two episodes (FYI: It’s a weekly joint, rather than a … Continue reading
Days after my review of Bart Layton’s American Animals published at Paste Magazine, I’m starting to wonder if I had problems with the film based on what I thought it should be rather than what it actually is. Yeah, yeah: Sounds like a bunch of hand-wringing movie critic anxiety over nothing. American Animals tells the story of four … Continue reading
Boston Calling isn’t over yet! I mean: It is. But I still have coverage to share, so it sort of isn’t? Anyway, I wrote a profile of the very great, super talented Lillie Mae Rische for Paste Magazine after chatting with her about how life’s treated her since releasing Forever and Then Some in 2017, her … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 