Reviewed: ‘It Was Just An Accident,’ ‘Eden’ and ‘The Great Flood’

4 Jan

“It Was Just An Accident”

The latest from Iranian director and noted dissident Jafar Panahi is something more contrived and ambitious than his normal quietly observant style — de facto cinéma vérité in its oblique shining of the light on the oppressive nature of Iran’s theocracy. Take “Offside” (2006), “This is Not a Film” (2011) — made while under house arrest when Panahi was banned from making films — or his masterwork, “The Circle” (2000), with its zinger of a reveal that women in what seems to be a social setting are in fact in jail for the equivalent of jaywalking or speeding.


In his first film since being released from prison in 2023, Panahi engages a stage-like convention akin to something Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”) might cook up, set in our world but with the players seemingly acting in their own absurdist universe. An auto mechanic, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), recognizes Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), whom he believes tortured him while in prison. Vahid employs the flat of a shovel during a traffic confrontation in the middle of a busy street to render Eghbal pliable and whisk him into his windowless van. The big tell is that the victimizer had a prosthetic leg, as does Eghbal. But Vahid was blindfolded and only know his assailant from the feel and hollowness of the leg. To ensure he has the right man, Vahid enlists the aid of others tortured by “Peg Leg” — all, likewise blindfolded. It’s an existential jurisprudence conundrum as the victims ride around in Vahid’s van bursting into bouts of rage and uncertainty as they debate what to do with their alleged former torturer, bound and gagged and locked in a tool chest in the back of the van.

The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, and it will make many best-of lists (as it should) but it is atypical Panahi, rich in production values and gingerly plotted, something that Panahi’s other films — seeking to skirt government censorship — avoided in their raw, natural, unflinching lens.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

The Best Films of 2025

28 Dec

If 2025 proved anything, it’s that cinema remains most alive when it resists easy definition. This was a year of films that slipped between categories — between art-house and genre (”Sinners,” “Bring Her Back”), intimacy and spectacle (”Resurrection”), sincerity and provocation — often in the same breath. The most compelling work didn’t shout its importance; it lingered, unsettled (”Die My Love,” “Sorry Baby”), and quietly reoriented how we look at the world, and at ourselves (One Battle After Another).

This was a year shaped less by consensus hits (”Fire and Ash” noted) than by films that demanded engagement–”Sinners” per se. Stories of grief (”Hamnet”), obsession, identity, and endurance unfolded in unexpected registers: tender where you expected bombast (”The Life of Chuck”), abrasive where comfort once reigned (”If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”). Even familiar auteurs–Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Richard Linklater and Chloé Zhao to name a few–arrived with sharpened (or re-honed in the case of Zhao) instincts, pushing past their own signatures to interrogate aging, memory, power, and the quiet violence of love. Meanwhile, emerging voices (Eva Victor, “Sorry Baby”) brought urgency and texture, reminding us that cinema’s future is not only global, but defiantly personal. Female debuts behind the lens resonated in 2025, others being Mary Bronstein (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Kristen Stewart (“Chronology of Water”), Kate Winslet (“Goodbye Jane”), “CSI” icon Mariska Hargitay (“My Mom Jayne”) and kind of (she co-directed a film with “Anora” helmer Sean Baker some 20 years ago), Shih-Ching Tsou (“Left-Handed Girl”).

If there’s a through-line to 2025, it’s an insistence on presence — emotional, political, and sensory. Films that ask us to sit with discomfort, to embrace ambiguity, and to find meaning not in resolution but in reckoning. They linger long after the credits roll, less concerned with tidy conclusions than with the residue they leave behind.

This year’s top 10 isn’t about consensus or cultural dominance. It’s a snapshot of a moment when filmmakers trusted audiences to lean in, to feel deeply, and to meet the work halfway. In a year defined by uncertainty and recalibration, these films reminded us why we keep returning to the dark: not for escape, but for illumination.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Reviewed ‘Endless Cookie,’ ‘Song Sung Blue’ and ‘Marty Supreme’

26 Dec



‘Endless Cookie’ (2025)

In my side hustle as a social justice film programmer, I’ve learned a lot about how other traditions tell stories. For some Indigenous filmmakers, the concept isn’t so much beginning, middle and end, but the ever-undulating cycles of life, family history and lore – with some culminations, but also always new beginnings. I can’t think of a better crystallization than this uplifting animated documentary by Seth Scriver and half-brother Pete revolving around taped conversations between the two detailing Pete’s struggles with schizophrenia. Seth is white, Pete is biracial (white and Indigenous), fluent in Cree and lives on the Shamattawa First Nation reserve in Manitoba. “Endless Cookie” is something of a mind-blower, gonzo and a bit meta. Among its digressions and side stories is a thread of Seth forever chasing funds to finish his film; indeed, it took more than eight years to make. But the matters at the core are isolation, addiction, colonialism and the harmful impacts on generations of Indigenous people, done in vivid, hand-drawn animation by Seth that makes Adult Swim look tame; the characters are all some freaky cool combination of human, dog and veggies, conceptual neighbors to SpongeBob or the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The title comes from that cyclical notion of life, but there is a character in the film called Cookie, who, as you might guess, is a sugary confection with legs and plenty of attitude. It’s a kind of anti-Pixar (no offense) adult animated film reminiscent of last year’s Oscar-nominated “Robot Dreams,” and this past weekend “Cookie” won Best Animated Film from the Boston Society of Film Critics.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ is an epic sequel

20 Dec

Bigger, longer and uncut could be the tagline for James Cameron’s latest “Avatar” chapter, “Fire and Ash,” which at three hours and 17 minutes is five minutes longer than 2022’s “Way of Water” and 35 more than the 2009 first film in the series, still the all-time top at the box office at nearly $3 billion in ticket sales. Where the franchise is going seems to be one long continuous saga akin to the J.R.R. Tolkien films (“Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings”).

“Fire and Ash” picks up a year after “Way of Water,” with the nefarious Resources Development Administration still hunting the whalelike tulkun for amrita, a substance in their brains coveted by rich humans back on Earth for its antiaging effects. Unobtainium – such a great and obvious name for a super metal – was the object of corporate greed in the 2009 original, but now seems to be an afterthought. Back then, to gain control of the resource-rich planet Pandora, the RDA sent in the Marines to expel the indigenous Na’vi, the 10-foot tall, blue-skinned humanoids with cool prehensile tails and limpid yellow eyes, who were in the way of the extractive mining. Now beyond pillaging the sea, it feels like Pandora might be a good spot for humans to relocate, as Earth has become dangerously close to depletion (we’re circa 2150). Intergalactic colonization isn’t a new cinematic concept, to be sure, but Pandora has air that is toxic to humans. They must wear oxygen masks to get around.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

The Cambridge woman who gives locals their moment of fame

15 Dec

Angela Peri of the Boston Casting talent firm.

When Hollywood comes to town to make a “Boston movie,” like 2023’s “The Holdovers” starring Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa, finding the faces in the crowd is often the job of Boston Casting, the biggest such agency in the Boston area.

Boston Casting was founded in 1990 by fifth-generation Cantabrigian Angela Peri. Over a croissant and chai at the Iggy’s Bread cafe in Huron Village, Imagine, Peri walked me through her story.

She’s a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School alum who was bitten by the acting bug. Though her mother discouraged the pursuit, Peri went to Los Angeles and Italy and dabbled in the business as a makeup artist, comedian and bit performer. She brushed elbows with Denis Leary and Ellen DeGeneres on the L.A. comedy scene and, while in Italy, graced the screen ever so briefly in “Cinema Paradiso” (1988), the Academy Award-winning love letter to community movie houses.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Remembering Charles Coe, poet, musician and connector

5 Dec

By Tom Meek

Saturday, November 29, 2025

Cantabrigian teacher and poet Charles Coe died Friday Nov. 21.

The spirit of creativity in Cambridge dimmed last week when longtime resident, teacher and poet Charles Coe died Monday from complications related to prostate cancer surgery. His death was sudden and stunned many. In addition to touching people with his words, often delivered in a deep, mellifluous baritone, Coe offered mentorship, leadership and a sense of community. He was 73.

He was an omnipresent figure in local literary circles: the Mass Poetry Festival, long-running literary salons across Cambridge and Somerville, the Writers’ Room, Black Writers Reading series, arts advocacy boards. If there was a gathering where people were wrestling with words or art or community, chances were good Coe had either helped organize it or slipped quietly into a seat to listen.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Harvard Square sees the light again

5 Dec

By Tom Meek

Friday, December 5, 2025

The restored lighting at the Christian Science Reading Room on Church Street in Cambridge’s Harvard Square.

A burst of brightness came to a gloomy stretch of Church Street last month as the Christian Science Reading Room restored soft white art deco lighting absent from the building’s facade for decades.
The lights returned to Church Street, across from the long-dormant AMC Loews Harvard Square, at a Nov. 7 unveiling. Pictures of the alluring illumination have become a slow-trending wave on local social media.

“Now when you see it, it catches your eye,” said Jason Fredette of Poyant Signs, the New Bedford company that restored the lighting over nine months. “The building looks totally different.”
The first structure at the site was a blacksmith shop in the late 1800s, later a veterinary practice. That became mixed retail at the turn of the century as Harvard Square became more thickly settled and the subway arrived in 1912, said Cambridge Historical Commission executive director Charles Sullivan. The 23 Church St. structure was razed in favor of the current one-story 1936 art deco design by architect William Laurence Galvin as a new, upscale home for Cambridge Gas and Electric Light Co.

Continue reading →

Tags: , ,

Reviewed: ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,’ ‘Sisu: Road to Revenge” and ‘Eternity’

5 Dec

‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ (2025)

The latest “Knives Out Mystery” serves up Josh O’Connor in his fourth feature this year – “The Mastermind,” “The History of Sound” and “Rebuilding” are the others – as a priest seeking to suss out a killer in a reclusive burg. (It was his part in last-year’s amped-up tennis drama “Challengers” that seemed to push the affable British actor to Hollywood’s must-have list.) Director Rian Johnson (“Brick,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) attracts an A-list cast to these “Knives” projects and shoehorns their unique personas into unlikely parts, which is where the magic happens. The main trick is Bond boy Daniel Craig as the Southern-twanged sleuth Benoit Blanc. He’s one part Hercule Poirot and another part Columbo with a splash of fop and Inspector Clouseau goofiness stirred in. Blanc’s the engine for the series, but it’s the casting of that ensemble he must work his way through to find out whodunit that brings joy to each episode. Here we settle in at a quaint upstate New York rectory led by monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher with demonstrative Trumpian undertones. Others in the crew of suspects when one goes belly-up are Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, a devout church lady and the monsignor’s stalwart ally; former bestselling sci-fi author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott); groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church); local attorney and church devotee Vera Draven (Kerry Washington); her adopted kid brother Cy (Daryl McCormack); smarmy doc and something of an Andrew Tate/Joe Rogan alt-right politico, Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny, “Civil War’’). O’Connor’s reverend Jud is the fly in the ointment when he shows up to check in on the church. The murderous plot’s already afoot; after the first corpse crops up, Blanc’s called in by the local police chief (Mila Kunis). At two and a half hours, the film folds in on itself too many times for its own good. Many of the characters are too thinly drawn, and there are logical flaws such as footage from Cy’s mounted iPhone that’s problematic because he’s often in the frame holding the camera. O’Connor gets a passing grade as the main focus, but it’s Close and Craig that sell it. Not as tight as the first “Knives Out,” but still a passable “Murder by Death”-lite caper. 

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

‘Hamnet’: Shakespeare in grief

27 Nov

The mere mention of the name Shakespeare and the conversation gets serious real fast. Gone for more than 400 years, the man has achieved transcendent cultural, intellectual and pop icon status. Who today could lay claim to such four centuries from now – Taylor Swift? Akira Kurosawa based the bulk of his samurai westerns on Shakespearean tragedies. “The Forbidden Planet” (1956), “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999) and “My Own Private Idaho” (1991) are just a handful of the many pop films based on the works by the Bard of Avon. The man himself was reimagined on screen in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and the lesser-known Kenneth Branagh outing, “All is True” (2018). Add to that “Hamnet,” a portrait of grief directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao and bolstered by strong performances from leads Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley.

It’s a heartfelt effort that despite the talent takes too long to find its wings. Drawn from Maggie O’Farrell’s much-ballyhooed 2020 novel – the author contributes to the script too – there’s a lot of emotion poured out onto the screen, seeking our sympathies without necessarily earning them. Much is obfuscated too, to the point of annoyance: The name Shakespeare is held back, so if you did not know the basis for the film, for much of it you’d see just an earnest young man (Mescal’s Will) lovestruck by his neighbor’s daughter (Buckley’s Agnes), a peculiar woman with witchy tendencies from a higher social strata.

Our smitten scribe is a tutor with scant financial resources, further saddled by the debts of his overbearing and quick-to-judge father. Money and class loom as impediments, yet Will professes his ardor with such conviction and eloquence that he and Agnes are allowed to wed (it helps that she is older and quirky to the point that her brother and father fear her becoming a spinster). They have three children – including twins Judith and the Hamnet of the film’s title.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

‘Sentimental Value’: Bad father, great filmmaker

22 Nov

Meta is all the rage these days in films about filmmakers and the filmmaking process. Take Richard Linklater’s ode to the French New Wave, “Nouvelle Vague” (available on Netflix), which follows a young Jean-Luc Godard in 1959 Paris seeking to make his first film (“Breathless”), or “Jay Kelly” from Noah Baumbach (“White Noise,” “Squid and the Whale”), in which George Clooney essentially plays George Clooney. Add to that Joachim Trier’s stirring “Sentimental Value,” about the creative tempest of filmmaker Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), an auteur well into his autumn seeking to achieve one last cinematic masterpiece.

There’s not an ounce of fat in the script, the performances are tight and lived-in and Trier, hailed for his edgy, dramatic simmers “The Worst Person in the World” (2021) and “Oslo, August 31st” (2011), again proves masterful in presenting a slow, ever-mounting, emotionalism, a devilish dark humor and a climax of melancholy and rue. The movie gets to you from the inside out.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries