Film/TV

From left, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean in director Rob Reiner's 1984 debut film "This Is Spinal Tap." (Courtesy Embassy Pictures/Photofest)

The Coolidge showcases 'Big Screen Debuts' of prominent directors

From Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" to Jordan Peele's "Get Out," the movie theater captures the jaw-dropping efforts of first-time directors ahead of the opening of its expansion. "We're hoping to...

New docuseries confronts the fallout from an infamous Boston murder

HBO's “Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning” examines what happened when Boston’s white-led law enforcement and media took Charles Stuart’s racist bait.

Tanglewood's Hollywood debut in Bradley Cooper's new film 'Maestro'

Bradley Cooper directed and stars as 20th century conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Cooper filmed “Maestro” at actual locations from Bernstein's life, including Tanglewood in Lenox.

Biopics 'Napoleon' and 'Maestro' are both tales of troubled marriages

Starring Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, the stories of a conqueror and a conductor would seem to have little in common. Yet, helmed by...

Starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, 'May December' is thrillingly discombobulating

Director Todd Haynes' film is another entertaining and unnerving exploration of the gaps between the lives we live and the stories we tell ourselves, reviews critic Sean Burns.

'Once Within A Time' is a zany, twisting indictment of culture today

Godfrey Reggio's latest film utilizes bleeding edge technology to indict a culture losing touch with its humanity, an intriguing oxymoron at the heart of his work.

For its 30th anniversary, 'Farewell My Concubine' returns to the big screen

Director Chen Kaige's film is a grand, old-fashioned epic with a cast of thousands, covering 50 years of Chinese history through the eyes of two orphans abandoned to the brutal...

For director Alexander Payne, making 'The Holdovers' felt like 'coming home'

While Payne grew up in Nebraska, filming his newest movie in Massachusetts led him to fall in love with Bostonians. "I began to call them Eastern Midwesterners,” he said.

Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla' paints Graceland as the world's gaudiest gilded cage

Based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” the film is a smaller, more muted movie, stuck at home in an estate that became a prison for our protagonist,...

Bold, post-war era South Korean cinema screens at Harvard Film Archive

Co-curated with the Korea Institute at Harvard, the monthlong series features some of the most notable and provocative South Korean films of the 1950s and 1960s.

'Anatomy of a Fall' is a smartly constructed courtroom drama

Writer-director Justine Triet’s film, which won top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a slippery procedural about an investigation and trial of a woman accused of killing her...

6 scary movies to watch at the theater this Halloween season

With more than two dozen frightening films screening locally during the run-up to All Hallows’ Eve, film critic Sean Burns selects six favorites to get you started.

Taylor Swift successfully brings her 'Eras Tour' to the big screen

Shot over three shows in August during the singer’s six-night stand at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, “The Eras Tour” is 168 minutes of exuberance from a performer at the...

5 films to watch by prolific director Werner Herzog

The legendary filmmaker is coming to WBUR's CitySpace to discuss his long-anticipated memoir, "Every Man for Himself and God Against All." Film critic Sean Burns recommends a handful of titles...

Pedro Almodóvar's 31-minute Western 'Strange Way of Life' goes by far too quickly

The film stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as former reunited on the range after 25 years apart. Critic Sean Burns admires the off-handed elegance but felt the director could...

'Dumb Money' sidesteps the reality of the GameStop short squeeze

The 2021 game retailer saga was so compelling that Boston author Ben Mezrich sold the film rights to his book “The Antisocial Network” before it was completed. However, critic Sean...

8 Greater Boston film festivals to check out this fall

Despite the dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, the festival circuit keeps chugging along with a steady stream of indie and international films screening locally. Film critic Erin Trahan highlights the...

Arts & Culture

Sep 15, 2023

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in "A Haunting in Venice." (Courtesy 20th Century Studios)

Hercule Poirot carries more burdens than ever before in 'A Haunting in Venice'

The film is Kenneth Branagh’s third take on the detective, and according to critic Sean Burns, quite gloomy. “The fleet pleasures of [Agatha] Christie’s mysteries get lost in all the...

Arts & Culture

Sep 14, 2023

Carol Sloane performs at age 14. (Courtesy "Sloane: A Jazz Singer")

'Sloane: Jazz Singer' documents a Boston music great who triumphed despite self-doubt

Carol Sloane was a brilliant, although underemployed, jazz singer who rose to relevance during 1961’s Music At Newport festival. While the era of jazz dominance is long gone, the director...

Arts & Culture

Sep 11, 2023

Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun in "The Mother and the Whore." (Courtesy FLC Press)

At the Brattle, the sordid and sublime films of Jean Eustache

“The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache” is a traveling retrospective that will showcase a dozen of the filmmaker’s documentaries, shorts and dramatic features. The series is headlined by a restoration...

Arts & Culture

Sep 5, 2023