Film/TV
Richard Linklater's two biopics offer opposite ends of a creative career
Both films are unconventional biopics about legendary 20th century artists, but they couldn’t be more temperamentally opposed. “Nouvelle Vague” is the early, euphoric rush of talent and exuberance before all...
'Springsteen' biopic plays like a song with only one note
Starring Jeremy Allen White, writer-director Scott Cooper’s portrait of The Boss is "cartoonishly reductive and crassly fictionalized in the manner of most formula Hollywood biopics, yet stubbornly absent any of...
7 scary and campy films to watch on the big screen this spooky season
There are more than 40 frightening films showing in the Greater Boston area between now and All Hallows’ Eve. Film critic Sean Burns shares the ones he's looking forward to...
A Gazan photojournalist is immortalized in a new documentary
Screening as part of the Boston Palestine Film Festival, “Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk” depicts one year of Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona’s life in Gaza, culminating in...
Local life on the big screen
Shot on an iPhone, filmmaker Federico Muchnik's anthology-style documentary “Massachusetts Avenue” explores the people and places along this "main artery." In Lukas Dong's sumptuously shot short documentary “Love, Chinatown,” activist...
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Two films focus on put-together women falling apart
Julia Roberts and Rose Byrne deliver two of the more spectacular performances you’re going to see this year, playing flinty, difficult characters blessedly unconcerned with eliciting the audience’s sympathies in...
Kathryn Bigelow's 'A House of Dynamite' is an electrifying nuclear thriller
An intercontinental ballistic missile is going to hit Chicago in a little more than 19 minutes. The director takes us through those 19 minutes three times, moving further up the...
'It's sheer gluttony' — IFFBoston's Fall Focus is packed with range
The 11th annual Fall Focus spills out over two weekends (plus some days) with a whopping 27 titles unspooling Oct. 9-Nov. 4. "They’ve got domestic psychodramas, international political thrillers and...
At the Brattle, two films capture different parts of the teen experience
Climate catastrophe and fascism lurk on the periphery of writer-director Neo Sora’s new tender coming-of-age story “Happyend," which plays alongside Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 2005 “Linda Linda Linda" about a punk girl...
Filmmaker Homa Sarabi maps her place in the world
The Iranian-born artist transforms memories and conversations into visual stories. Exploring longing, displacement, and belonging, Sarabi charts connections between cultures, people and place, even from oceans apart.
Paul Thomas Anderson's 'One Battle After Another' is a rollicking chase comedy
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a retired revolutionary who’s been hiding out for the past 15 years. He’s thrust back into the fray upon discovering that his teenage daughter...
10 Greater Boston film festivals and series to check out this fall
From the Boston Asian American Film Festival to IFFBoston's expanded Fall Focus series, WBUR film critic Erin Trahan shares 10 film events that offer hope, experimentation and challenge perceptions.
Six or more films to see at the Taiwan Film Festival of Boston
Now in its seventh year, TFFB will be held Sept. 19-25 at venues around Boston and online Sept. 26-Oct. 12.
'Spinal Tap II' turns down the volume
The dire, decades-later sequel "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues" wheezes onscreen with a slack, valedictory aura; it’s a movie made not because anyone had anything new or urgent to...
Ben Shattuck on 'The History of Sound,' his first film and folk music
The writer's short story-turned-film stars Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as Boston music students who begin a relationship and eventually traverse Maine recording folk songs. Shattuck spoke with WBUR about...
Camaraderie and carnage mark 'The Long Walk'
Charismatic performances from actors Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson anchor this tense adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian novel. Director Francis Lawrence uses stark visuals and a grim atmosphere to craft...
Coming-of-age comedy 'Boys Go to Jupiter' is a labor of love
Made entirely on the free, open-source 3D modeling program, writer-director Julian Glander's film follows a mischievous crew of kids killing time during the holiday dead zone between Christmas and New...
Welcome to 'Jaws Island'
In June, WBUR's Andrea Shea boarded a ferry for Martha's Vineyard to document a Woodstock for "Jaws" fans. She spoke with finatics, prop masters and historians for her new three-part...
'Splitsville' filmmakers on their new movie and making dumb comedies
Director Michael Angelo Covino and his co-star and writing partner Kyle Marvin play lifelong friends whose marriages are on the rocks. The duo spoke with WBUR film critic Sean Burns...
'Jaws' is back in theaters for its 50th anniversary
The "ultimate summer blockbuster," Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic about a killer shark on the loose is rolling out to multiplexes in new digital transfers and enhanced formats, and purists can...