gerald peary

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Review: Albert Nobbs

Lesbianism doesn't exist as a cogent category in 19th century Ireland, which could explain why Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), a woman disguised for years as a man and employed as a Dublin waiter, has no personal understanding of who she is, her identity, o
Gender identity crisis
By GERALD PEARY | January 27, 2012

Review: Silent Souls

This is probably the only film we'll encounter about the Merja culture of West Central Russia, a Finno-Ugric tribe in which even the most modernized people pay allegiance to ancient customs.
Magic realism and Chekhovian melancholy
By GERALD PEARY | January 20, 2012

Review: Hell and Back Again

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Hell and Back Again offers a potent documentary correlative to the narrative of The Hurt Locker .
The real-life story of a young marine
By GERALD PEARY | January 06, 2012

Review: War Horse(1)

War Horse is corny, sentimental, overlong, but also spectacular at times, even stirring.
A veritable, old-fashioned story
By GERALD PEARY | December 23, 2011

Review: Weekend

Among the world's masterpieces of misanthropy, Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 opus follows a loathsome, greedy, sexually perverse bourgeois married couple on a weekend jaunt into the French countryside during which they plan to murder the wife's dying father,
Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 opus
By GERALD PEARY | December 09, 2011

Review: Burke & Hare

Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are only faintly humorous as the titular team of assassins, Burke and Hare .
Mediocre black comedy
By GERALD PEARY | December 02, 2011

Review: Tales from the Golden Age

The ironically titled film refers to the dreadful Alice-in-Wonderland years when Nicolae Ceausescu was the Communist strongman of Romania.
Panorama of black-humor stories
By GERALD PEARY | December 02, 2011

Review: The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby

"My father lived in shadows," says filmmaker Carl Colby in voiceover. "He liked being invisible." His documentary is a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to understand William Colby, the ex-CIA head who died in 1996.
Carl Colby documents his father's life
By GERALD PEARY | November 18, 2011

Review: J. Edgar

Filmmaker Clint Eastwood, famously Republican, portrays right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover, the late FBI head, as a self-aggrandizing, conniving bully and mama's boy who broke the law whenever he wanted to bring anyone down.
DiCaprio as right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover
By GERALD PEARY | November 11, 2011

Review: Weekend

This appealing gay-themed drama, written and directed with intelligence by Andrew Haigh, is a British cousin to the American mumblecore movement, as two twentysomething guys meet, have sex, talk, have more sex, have much more chat, and get closer and cl
Gay-themed drama
By GERALD PEARY | October 14, 2011

Review: Happy, Happy

First time filmmaker Anne Sewitsky finds a compassionate way to tell a familiar tale of adultery, and she's helped immeasurably by a first-rate acting ensemble, especially the two superlative actresses, whom you could imagine cast in films of the late I
A familiar tale of adultery
By GERALD PEARY | September 23, 2011

Review: The Arbor

Andrea Dunbar turned her smothering, abused, and abusive life in a West Yorkshire housing project into a series of raw autobiographical dramas, and, as a teen playwright in the '80s, she became a star in London with acclaimed productions of The Arbor
Clio Barnard tells Andrea Dunbar's cursed story
By GERALD PEARY | July 22, 2011

Review: Septien

What can be done with this unhappy home? Enter a self-appointed minister with messianic impulses.
A magnificent exorcism
By GERALD PEARY | July 15, 2011

Review: Terri

Credit indie director Azazel Jacobs for building a case for Terri, so that — without manipulation or sentimentality — we begin to appreciate the clumsy lad at the same time that he starts to shed his self-loathing.
Subtle, sweet, and eccentric
By GERALD PEARY | July 15, 2011

Review: Le Amiche

Lovers of the great Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni have cause to rejoice with this new-print revival of his best pre- L’avventura feature.
An artsy, unsentimental chick flick
By GERALD PEARY | June 25, 2010

Review: Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julian Shulman

Eric Bricker's documentary celebration of America's most renowned architectural photographer is effusive in its praise, tame in its public-television-style execution.
High modernism in high spirits
By GERALD PEARY | February 26, 2010

Review: The Most Dangerous Man in America

At age 79, Daniel Ellsberg is getting the last guffaw.
Hail to Daniel Ellsberg
By GERALD PEARY | February 12, 2010

Interview: Daniel Ellsberg

"By ordinary standards of presidents, Obama is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough."
Courage under fire
By CHRIS FARAONE | February 12, 2010

Karen Schmeer: 1970-2010

Karen Schmeer, the brilliant local film editor whose work on Errol Morris's documentary The Fog of War helped win it the Best Documentary Oscar in 2004, died January 29 in a tragic accident, struck by a getaway car as she was crossing a street in Manha
In Memoriam
By PETER KEOUGH | February 01, 2010

Interview: Corneliu Porumboiu

"I chose to focus on the waiting parts — the things you're not used to seeing in classic movies. I cut out all the action."
Misplaced modifier: the director defines Police, Adjective
By PETER KEOUGH | January 22, 2010

Fast and loose

You're a cocky film-school grad with a drawer full of socko screenplays and Hollywood ambitions. But it's all California dreamin', as you're shivering in New England, cutting public-service announcements and digitizing educational videos, your only brush
Robert Altman's movie life
By GERALD PEARY | December 11, 2009

Reykjavik International Film Festival 2009

How would the Reykjavik International Film Festival, which I was attending, September 17 to 27, be affected by the horrid downturn?

By GERALD PEARY | October 02, 2009

Love letter

Rock critics rarely cut gold records. Likewise, few football reporters go on to quarterback Super Bowl winners.
Gerald Peary's ode to the film critic
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 04, 2009

The hub of film criticism?

In his deep survey, Gerald Peary hardly conceals his opinion that Boston is the epicenter of film criticism.
A peek into the Phoenix archives
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 04, 2009

Review: The Silence Before Bach

Catalonian avant-garde filmmaker Pere Portabella expresses his adoration of Johann Sebastian Bach through an odd, rambling, privately formed essay that all too rarely connects with the viewer.
Perplexing
By GERALD PEARY | August 14, 2009

Newman's own

Among Shawn Levy's books is one of my favorite film bios, King of Comedy , with crazy-guy Jerry Lewis, so show-off goofy and schmaltzy, spilling all on every exuberant, excessive page.
Mainstream life, good read
By GERALD PEARY | June 26, 2009

Festival atmosphere

Summer traditionally has been the happy hunting ground for Hollywood studios — the time when they unleash their big-budgeted, f/x-heavy warhorses on armies of newly freed schoolchildren and frazzled adults trying to beat the heat.
Between the Blockbuster and the beach there are the film festivals of New England
By PETER KEOUGH | June 12, 2009

The Critic Experience: Two Movies About Reviewers

Yesterday I saw two films about critics. The first, Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience,"...
By Peter Keough | April 28, 2009

Review: For the Love of Movies

Like Trekkies and other documentaries that examine what makes particular nerd legions tick, For the Love of Movies beams viewers to a planet that outsiders only think they know about.
Why do some people get to watch movies for a living?
By CHRIS FARAONE | April 17, 2009

Alive and well

The seventh annual Independent Film Festival of Boston
The seventh annual Independent Film Festival of Boston
By | April 17, 2009

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