Film
Affleck’s ‘Animals’ is a dog
⭐⭐ Rating: 1.5 out of 4. Ben Affleck made it in Hollywood as an actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter, then proved to be a more-than-reliable filmmaker, with credits including “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Town” and the true-story espionage thriller “Argo” (2012), which won the Oscar for Best Picture. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for “Animals,” the […]
Rachel Morrison on grief, loss and her new movie
One of the most powerful women in filmmaking is Cambridge-bred Rachel Morrison, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer whose movies include “The Black Panther” and “Mudbound.” Morrison has moved to the director’s chair, making her debut in 2024 with the female boxing biopic “The Fire Inside.” Cambridge Day caught up with her as her new movie, “Love of […]
‘Verity’is lifeless on page and on screen
“Verity” ⭐⭐ Rating: 1.5 out of 4. The movie version of “Verity,” Colleen Hoover’s hackneyed page lift of Daphne du Maurier’s great 1938 Gothic psycho thriller “Rebecca,” has an all-star cast that may not be enough to give the romance novelist a fourth box office success. Read more Community, developers have mixed response to new […]
Catching predators in the name of fame
“Primetime” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4. Documentarian Lance Oppenheim (“Ren Faire,” “Spermworld”) steps into the narrative feature-scape with this lurid submersion into the early years of online predation, where chatrooms were used as Venus flytraps to snare underage targets and goad them into real-life meetups. The scummy underbelly, as Oppenheim depicts it in “Primetime,” […]
Intensity in survival and horror
“The Weight” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 4. In The Weight,” a muscular, Depression-era survival drama, Ethan Hawke again looms large in small, gritty fare. Hawke brings a lean, tightly wound intensity to a man carrying more than his body— or perhaps his soul — can bear. It’s another powerful performance, after a deserved Oscar […]
“Marie Antoinette and friends: Three films by Sofia Coppola”
If the words “Hollywood royalty” apply to anyone, it’s Sofia Coppola. Her father is Francis Ford Coppola, director of such American classics as “The Godfather” (1972) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979); her mother, Eleanor, was an acclaimed documentarian; and her family tree includes such thespians as Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, and Nicolas Cage. Unlike some Hollywood […]
“Mighty Mary” and the all-woman team that cannonballed America’s Cup
Most of the action in “Mighty Mary,” the new documentary about the first all-woman yachting team to vie for the America’s Cup in 1995, takes place in San Diego, where the women train and race. But the film also has plenty of Cambridge connections. Director and former Olympic rower Mary Mazzio lived in Cambridge in […]
A Robin Hood origin story
“The Uprising” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4. The latest action flick from “Jason Bourne” director Paul Greengrass has been marred by a marketing fumble that hailed the movie as a Robin Hood origin story. “Witness the rise of Robin Hood,” was the mid-summer tagline until Focus Features caught flack — too much of a […]
The Brattle is back. Settle into its new seats for classics and cult faves
After a weeklong closure for renovations, the Brattle Theatre reopens Friday, with an ambitious summer lineup. Following a Friday matinee of the original “West Side Story” (1961) on 35mm are two weekend-long premiere runs, one a new restoration of an old favorite, one a new feature by a cult legend. Elaine May’s “Mikey and Nicky” […]
A spaghetti western and new Spider-Man
“Dead Souls” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 2.5 out of 4. For his self-proclaimed final film, cult warrior Alex Cox has laid his sights on Donald Trump, ICE, and AI. Not a bad hit list, but a little weird when you consider it’s a spaghetti western based on the 1842 book by Nikolai Gogol — where a shady […]