Peg Aloi

Peg Aloi was a freelance film critic for the Boston Phoenix from 1997 through its demise in 2013 (one of her reviews appeared in the last issue). She wrote the film column for Art New England for several years, and currently she writes film and television criticism for Boston’s online arts criticism magazine The Arts Fuse, as well as The Orlando Weekly, Diabolique and Crooked Marquee. She taught film studies at Emerson College from 1999 through 2009. She co-edited an anthology of essays on HBO’s Carnivale (with Hannah Johnston) and is currently writing a book on witchcraft in pop culture. She is a traditional singer and an award-winning poet. Peg’s favorite film of all time is Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Robyn Bahr

Robyn Bahr is a freelance film/television critic and Oscar prognosticator who has written for The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post, GQ, Vanity Fair, The Village Voice, Slate, and VICE, among others. She specializes in period dramas, Britcoms, kids’ content, and women-centered narratives. Her very first piece of criticism was a contrarian review of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 for her high school newspaper, which included the very astute line, “Moore claims to be presenting the truth, but who really knows what the truth is?” Robyn holds a B.A. in English from Amherst College and an Ed.M. in children’s media from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. You can follow her as @RobynBahr on Twitter and find her recipes at Yentavision.com.

Dana Barbuto

A Boston native, Dana Barbuto is the longtime arts and entertainment editor at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy. She writes film reviews, features and the blog It’s Only Entertainment. She loves movies, beer, football, Legos and superheroes. Follow her on Twitter at @dbarbuto_Ledger.

 

Ty Burr

Ty Burr is a film critic and culture columnist for the Boston Globe and the author of the critically acclaimed “Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame” (Anchor, 2012). He has been at the Globe since 2002; before that, he wrote for Entertainment Weekly. He began his career at Home Box Office in the 1980s, where he helped program the Cinemax pay-cable service. Burr has also written “The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together” (Anchor, 2007) and an e-book, “The 50 Movie Starter Kit: What to Know if You Want to Know What You’re Talking About” (Random House, 2013). His work has appeared in The New York Times and many other publications. He regularly appears on such local and national media programs as WBUR’s “Here and Now” and WGBH’s “Greater Boston.” He teaches courses in film criticism and film history at Boston University, Tufts University, and Emerson College. A member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics, Burr studied film at Dartmouth and New York University. He lives in Newton, MA. In 2017, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.

Laura Clifford

Laura Clifford is a Boston native who began producing and cohosting Reeling: the Movie Review Show in 1991. The biweekly broadcast has been outpacing ‘The Simpsons’ in number of episodes ever since. Its companion website, Reeling Reviews, went live in 1995. Laura loves Scotland, reading, growing orchids and all things weird. She also loves the Groucho Marx quote “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member,” and yet here she is. Laura is also a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Online Film Critics Society.

Isaac Feldberg

Isaac Feldberg is a journalist and film critic currently based in the Boston area. Across seven years in the field, he’s written most regularly for The Boston Globe and Fortune Magazine, and also contributed reviews and/or news coverage to Entertainment Weekly, Boston.com, and The Arts Fuse, among other outlets.

 

Audrey Fox

Audrey Fox is the assistant editor at Jumpcut Online and a staff writer at We Live Entertainment and Crooked Marquee, with bylines at RogerEbert.com, The Nerdist, Awards Circuit, and Certified Forgotten, amongst others. She has been blessed by our tomato overlords with their coveted seal of approval. Audrey received her BA in film from Clark University and her MA in International Relations from Harvard University. When she’s not watching movies, she loves historical non-fiction, theater, traveling, and playing the violin (poorly).

Ezra Haber Glenn

Ezra Haber Glenn is a Lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning, where he teaches a special subject on “The City in Film” and coordinates a semi-regular film series. His essays, criticism, and reviews have appeared in the The Arts Fuse, WBUR’s The ARTery, Northeastern’s Experience Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal, the New York Observer, Bloomberg’s CityLab, the Journal of the American Planning Association, and Next City, and he is the regular film reviewer for Planning, the monthly magazine of the American Planning Association. Follow him on http://www.urbanfilm.org and @UrbanFilmOrg.

Oscar Goff

Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville, MA. He is the film section editor and senior critic for Boston Hassle, where he has been covering Boston’s rugged cinematic landscape since 2013. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Oscar also served as film editor for the free monthly newspaper the Boston Compass for five years, and has contributed to such publications as WBUR’s Artery and IHeartnoise. He tweets, begrudgingly, as @TheOscarGoff.

Tim Jackson

Tim Jackson has been a SAG/AFTRA actor for 30 years and a Boston musician with contributions to several film soundtracks for 40 years. His dubious legacy will no doubt include that he was in the 10th row for the Beatles premier on the Ed Sullivan Show, and was in the 11th band to be featured on MTV. He has completed four documentary films as a writer, producer, and director. His first “Chaos and Order: Making American Theater” was selected for archives of the American Theater Wing. His latest American Gurner follows his adventures competing in the world championship Gurning competitions in Egremont, UK. He currently writes for the Arts Fuse. His work can be found at TimJacksonWeb.com. Twitter@ professorjackson.

Allyson Johnson

Allyson Johnson is a film critic and journalist based in New England. She is the Film and Features Editor for TheYoungFolks.com as well as film critic for CambridgeDay.com and film writer for ThePlaylist.net. Her work can also be found at VagueVisages, RogerEbert, TheMarySue and Seacoast Media outlets including the York County Coast Star and the York Weekly.

 

Peter Keough

Peter Keough had been Film Editor at The Boston Phoenix from 1989 until the paper’s demise in 2013.  The Boston Globe took pity on him and he has been writing there ever since. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, The National Society of Film Critics, the International Federation of Film Critics, the Critics Choice Awards group and will join any organization that offers free food at their meetings. Despite his busy schedule he has found time to edit the book “Flesh and Blood: The National Society of Film Critics on Sex, Violence and Censorship,” published by Mercury House Press in 1995. Critics raved, declaring it “a book with a long title” and “full of amusing typos, factual errors and misspellings.” It sold over seventeen copies, most to now estranged family members and friends. He followed this up in 2013 with “Kathryn Bigelow Interviews” from the University Press of Mississippi, a book which most people agree reads better in the Korean translation.

Daniel M. Kimmel

Daniel M. Kimmel is a Boston-area film reviewer, past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics, and founding co-president of the Boston Online Film Critics Association. He reviewed for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette from 1984 to 2009.  His reviews can now be found at North Shore Movies.net. Kimmel’s byline has appeared in numerous publications, including Variety, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Film Comment, the Internet Review of Science Fiction, Space and Time magazine and Cinefantastique. His book on the history of the Fox television network,” The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television” (2004) received the Cable Center Book Award. His other books include “The Dream Team – The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks: Lessons from the New Hollywood.”

Loren King

Loren King has been reviewing movies since the ‘80s when she was film critic for The Mass Media at UMASS/Boston. She’s even sometimes gotten paid for them. She’s written about film for The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The Provincetown Banner, Boston Spirit, Chicago Tribune, Bay Windows, Filmmaker, The Advocate and many other publications and web sites, some of which are still around. Besides writing arts features, she currently covers local film festivals and events in “Scene Here,” her regular column for The Boston Globe and reviews movies for Newport This Week. She served as president of the BSFC from 2004-2010 and is also a member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

Joyce Kulhawik

Joyce Kulhawik, best known as the Emmy Award-winning Arts & Entertainment Critic for CBS-Boston (WBZ-TV 1981-2008), has covered local and national events from Boston and Broadway to Hollywood, reporting live from the Oscars, the Emmys, and The Grammys. Kulhawik is currently  President of the Boston Theater Critics Association, a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the Boston Online Film Critics Association. Nationally, Kulhawik has co-hosted syndicated movie review programs with Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin. She regularly lectures on movies at Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre, The Center for the Arts in Natick (TCAN), and annually judges the “48 Hour Film Fest” in Boston. Look for her reviews online at JoycesChoices.com, RogerEbert.com, and WBUR’s The ARTery.

Tom Meek

Tom Meek is a critic at Cambridge Day, the WBUR ARTery and The Charleston City Paper, and has appeared regularly on TV (NECN) and radio. Tom values a harmonious universe and rides his bike everywhere. You can follow him on Twitter @ TBMeek3.

 

Brett Michel 

Brett Michel writes for The Improper Bostonian. You can always find Brett dressed in black, donning a cap and sitting in the middle of one of the very front rows of the theater.

 

Tim Miller 

Tim Miller was the Cape Cod Times film critic for nearly 36 years. A Detroit native (and hardcore Tigers fan), he’s been obsessed with movies since skipping school in 1962 to see “Lawrence of Arabia” with his parents when he was 7. Miller earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his master’s from Suffolk University, where he taught film and journalism for 10 years. He continues to teach film at Curry College and Cape Cod Community College. He is a juror each year for the short-film competition of the Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival, has moderated several panel discussions at the Woods Hole Film Festival and frequently is heard as a guest on Cape & Islands NPR station WCAI. His work appeared as a chapter in the book “John Sayles: Interviews.” His favorite movie is “Almost Famous” – because it makes him feel good to be alive.

Jake Mulligan 

Jake Mulligan is the associate film editor and film critic for Dig Boston, an alt-weekly newspaper.

 

Cassidy Olsen

Cassidy Olsen is a freelance film critic and culture journalist who has been contributing to Boston publications since 2016. She was selected as an inaugural member of the “3 Days in Cannes” program in 2018, and was also selected for the New York Film Festival Critics Academy in 2019, with her work on the festival published in Film Comment. She served as the film critic at The Improper Bostonian in its final year, and continues to contribute to Dig Boston and The Boston Globe. She is currently based in Dublin and attends the National Film and Television School in London.

Janice Page

Janice writes about film for the Boston Globe, where she is also editor of book development. She was previously on staff as an editor and writer at the Los Angeles Times and the Providence Journal-Bulletin, and she cut her journalistic teeth as editor of the weekly Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth, Mass., where the most famous attraction is a rock. Her new-media adventures include serving as executive producer of MSN’s now defunct BostonSidewalk.com, which was supposed to have funded her early retirement. A native of Braintree, Janice moved back to Massachusetts in 1997 after Lauren Bacall commanded her to leave L.A. and save her soul. Bacall ended one interview by saying that Boston is home to “real people.” This is true, even if oftentimes you find them sitting in the dark, reviewing torture porn.

Gerald Peary

Gerald Peary writes about film and books for The Arts Fuse. Before that, he was for many years a film critic for The Boston Phoenix and a film professor at Suffolk University.  A Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, he is the Programmer for the Boston University Cinematheque, a former Acting Director of the Harvard Film Archive, and a member of the National Society of Film Critics. An author of eight books on the cinema, and a Fulbright Scholar in Belgrade, ex-Yugoslavia, Peary has made two feature documentaries, For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism, and Archie’s Betty and is completing a third, The  Rabbi Goes West. He acted in the cult indie feature, Computer Chess. gpeary@geraldpeary.com.  http://www.geraldpeary.com/

Betsy Sherman 

Betsy Sherman first imposed her idiosyncratic taste in movies on other people when she programmed for the Wellesley College film society while an undergraduate in the 1970s. She insisted on running silent film weekends when everyone else just wanted to see Barbra Streisand movies. At one point during her thirteen years writing about movies for The Boston Globe, she was chastised by another journalist for having given Cabin Boy four stars. While she was interviewing Rod Steiger for the Globe, he began to cry (it wasn’t her fault). Betsy has also written for The Boston Phoenix, The Improper Bostonian, Art New England, and WBUR online, among others. In 2011, she received a master’s degree from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and she is a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. She now writes about movies for the website The Arts Fuse.

Ed Symkus

Ed Symkus, a Boston native, reviews films for GateHouse Media and WCAP-AM (980), and writes film features for the Boston Globe and GateHouse. He’s been offering opinions about movies since he was dropped off at the Franklin Park Theatre in Dorchester when he was 7. His favorite movie is “And Now My Love.” The only film that gives him hives is “Liquid Sky.” An Emerson College graduate, he’s a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, is co-author of “Wrestle Radio U.S.A.: Grapplers Speak” (ECW Press), plays guitar, shook hands with Muhammad Ali, went to Woodstock, and can be seen as an extra in “The Witches of Eastwick,” but only if you squint.

Scout Tafoya

Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Nylon Magazine. He is currently the film and TV reviewer for Cult of Mac. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the author of more than 400 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie. His latest video essay series is The End of History, made in collaboration with Tucker Johnson, about Ridley & Tony Scott and the death of the popular American cinema. 

Erin Trahan

Erin Trahan has been writing about and reviewing film and television for WBUR’s the ARTery since 2013. She also teaches film journalism at Emerson College. For nearly a decade she edited The Independent, overseeing the preservation of the archive of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers and contributing to books about film distribution and independent women filmmakers. She has written about film for The Boston Globe, MovieMaker Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, and other publications. When the mood strikes, she writes a poem.

 

Robert Tremblay

Robert Tremblay has been the film critic at the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham for almost 15 years. During his tenure at the News, which began in 1989, he has been a bureau chief, feature writer, copy editor and business writer. He is also the paper’s longtime restaurant critic. Before joining the News, he was as an editor for the Town Crier publications in Sudbury, Weston and Wayland. From 1978 to 1985, Tremblay worked at the Wellesley Townsman, first as a reporter and later as its editor-in-chief. From 1986 to 1988, he lived in Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne. Tremblay is also a longtime member of the Harvard Square Scriptwriters, a screenwriters support group. He is the author of 17 screenplays.

Greg Vellante

Greg Vellante has been writing film criticism professionally since before graduating high school. From 2007 to 2013, he was the chief film critic for the Eagle Tribune newspaper, writing reviews, interviews, and film-centric features. He now writes regularly for EDGE Boston and Spectrum Culture. Greg can often be found at the historic Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA, his second home and favorite place in the world.

 

James Verniere

James Verniere, also known as the mysteriously youthful James Verniere, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers University with a Master’s Degree in English literature and has been the film critic for the Boston Herald since many of you were little children—and will continue to be when many of you are dead and buried. He is also a member of the National Society of Film Critics. Before becoming critic for the Herald, Verniere was a full-time free-lance writer for such publications as Film Comment, Sight and Sound, Moviegeor’s Guide, The Aquarian Arts Weekly, Heavy Metal and Twilight Zone. Among his more noteworthy, non-film-related activities was teaching a semester of Freshman Composition at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women when the Black Liberation Army member Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) staged her escape.

Ethan Warren

Ethan Warren is a senior editor with the online film journal Bright Wall/Dark Room. A graduate of the creative writing MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, he lives on the south shore of Boston with his wife, Caitlin, and their children.

In Memoriam

David Brudnoy

David Brudnoy was a founding BSFC member and long time WBZ radio host who sadly left us in 2004.

 

Jay Carr

Jay Carr reviewed new movies for New England Cable News and old ones for Turner Classic Movies. A native of New York City, where he grew up in a household that read six newspapers daily, he dreamed of ending his days like the tabloid-famous Collyer brothers of Manhattan, who died in their brownstone, buried under piles of old papers. He was well on his way to this shining goal. Carr prepared for a newspaper career by getting a degree in chemistry (good movies have chemistry, don’t they?) and was immediately diverted from his studies by joining one of the two papers at the City College of New York. While there, he started doing journalism for money—although not much—by working as a police reporter at the Jersey City Journal. Then came jobs on the New York Post and Detroit News, with time out for an army hitch (the army’s idea, not his). He also was chief film critic at the Boston Globe for 20 years. He won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, awarded by the English department chairmen of Yale, Princeton and Cornell Universities and was named Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et Lettres, by the French government for writings on French film. He edited and contributed to the anthology, The A-List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films. Jay sadly passed in May of 2014

 

Past Members

Inkoo Kang

Inkoo Kang is a freelance film critic and journalist. She is a Contributing Editor at Box Office Magazine, as well as a regular reviewer for the Village Voice and Screen Junkies. Her essays on film have been published in The Atlantic, Salon, and Indiewire. Her great dream in life is to direct a remake of ALL ABOUT EVE with an all-dog cast.  (member on hiatus)

 

Gary Susman

Gary has reviewed movies and interviewed filmmakers since 1989 for The Boston Phoenix, where he has also covered music, theater, television, and books. He blogs daily about movies and TV at AOL’s Moviefone Blog and TV Squad blogs. He has written about film for such outlets as The Village Voice, The Chicago Sun-Times, People, The Guardian, Life, CNN, and MSNBC. He is still an occasional contributor to Entertainment Weekly, where he was a founder and editor of EW’s award-winning Pop Watch blog. He lives in New Jersey. (member on hiatus)

Ann Lewinson

Ann Lewinson reviews movies for the Boston Phoenix as well as for the Kansas City Star and the Santa Fe Reporter. She was the film critic for the Hartford Advocate for four years, during which she appeared on Hartford’s Fox61 morning news and was profiled in Fitness magazine, which thought her recommendation for putting soy sauce on popcorn was just weird. She has written for the Sundance Daily Insider, the Tribeca Film Festival catalogue, The Independent and Willamette Week; her short story “The Kubrick Version,” about a lost director’s cut of The Shining, was published in AGNI. She studied filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, briefly worked as a sound editor and is finishing her first novel. She is a member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and lives in New York. (member on hiatus)

Wesley Morris 

Wesley Morris was a film critic at the Boston Globe. Previously, he wrote film reviews and essays for the San Francisco Examiner, and, later, the San Francisco Chronicle. His writing has also appeared in Film Comment and Slate. He was born in Philadelphia in 1975. He is a graduate of Yale University and now resides in Cambridge. (member on hiatus).

 

Steve Vineberg

Steve Vineberg writes for The Threepenny Review and Critics at Large (criticsatlarge.ca) and has been published in The Boston Phoenix, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Christian Century, The Perfect Vision, The Oxford American, and many other venues.  He is the author of three books:  Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style (winner of the Joe A. Calloway Prize for Best Book in Theatre), No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade, and High Comedy in American Movies: Class and Humor from the 1920s to the Present.  He is a Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross, where he teaches film and theatre.