Tim Miller
CO-PRESIDENT
Tim Miller, co-president of the Boston Society of Film Critics, writes for Cape Cod Wave Magazine. He 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 and journalism at Cape Cod Community College. His work appears as a chapter in the book “John Sayles: Interviews.” His favorite movie is “Almost Famous” – because it makes him feel good to be alive.
Dana Barbuto
CO-PRESIDENT
A Boston native, Dana Barbuto runs the website http://www.BostonMovieNews.com where she reports and reviews all things related to cinema and the 617. Prior to that, she was the longtime arts and entertainment editor at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy. Dana is co-president of the BSFC. Follow her on Twitter at @DanaBarbuto.
Laura Clifford
SECRETARY
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 Critics Choice Association, formerly the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Online Film Critics Society.
Bob Tremblay
TREASURER
Robert Tremblay is a freelance film journalist and the former 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 was also the paper’s longtime restaurant critic. Before joining the News, he was 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.
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.
Ty Burr
A film critic and pop culture columnist for The Boston Globe for two decades, from 2002 to 2021, Ty currently writes “Ty Burr’s Watch List” (tyburrswatchlist.substack.com), a subscription e-mail newsletter for streaming movie and TV recommendations and cultural commentary; he also writes feature commentary and reviews for the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books “Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame” (2013), “The Best Old Movies for Families” (2007), and the e-book “The 50 Movie Starter Kit: What to Know if You Want to Know What You’re Talking About” (2013). He wrote reviews and features on many topics for Entertainment Weekly throughout the 1990s and programmed movies for HBO/Cinemax in the 1980s. A member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics, Ty also teaches courses in film and criticism at Boston University and Emerson College. 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.
Audrey Fox
Audrey Fox is a features editor and film/television critic at Looper, with bylines at RogerEbert.com, The Nerdist, /Film, and IGN, 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 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.
Oscar Goff
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville, MA. He is the editor in chief and senior film critic for Boston Hassle, where he has been covering Boston’s rugged cinematic landscape since 2013. A Tomatometer-approved critic and member of the Online Film Critics Society and Boston Online Film Critics Association, Oscar also served as film editor for the free monthly newspaper the Boston Compass for five years. He has appeared as a guest on such podcasts as Boston Scifi Presents and Exiting Through the 2010s, and his byline has appeared in WBUR’s ARTery, iHeartNoise, and translated into Spanish on Cualia. He tweets, begrudgingly, as @TheOscarGoff.
Tim Jackson
Tim Jackson has been a SAG/AFTRA actor since 1990. He played Joe Kopecne in the film “Chappaquiddick.” His five-decade career as a Boston musician includes contributions to several film soundtracks including Return of the Secaucus 7. He has written and directed two short documentaries and three features including biographies of singer/songwriter Robin Lane and author/artist Joan Walsh Anglund, and Chaos and Order: Making American Theater, which was selected for archives of the American Theater Wing. He taught acting, film history, and popular culture at the New England Institute of Art, retiring after 20 years. He currently writes for the Arts Fuse.
Allyson Johnson
Allyson Johnson is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of InBetweenDrafts.com. She is an Editor and TV/Film critic at ButWhyTho.net and Film/TV critic for CambridgeDay.com and Pajiba.com along with weekly film correspondent for NECN. Her bylines can also be found at RogerEbert, Bright Wall/Dark Room, GirlsOnTops, Inverse, Bustle, CrookedMarquee, ThePlaylist, and more. You can follow her on her Substack.
Peter Keough
Peter Keough had been Film Editor at The Boston Phoenix from 1989 until the paper’s demise in 2013 and is currently a contributor to the Arts Fuse. He is a member of The National Society of Film Critics, the International Federation of Film Critics, and the Critics Choice Awards group and has participated in numerous film festival juries. The books he has edited include “Flesh and Blood: The National Society of Film Critics on Sex, Violence and Censorship,” published by Mercury House Press in 1995, “Kathryn Bigelow Interviews,” published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2013, and For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2019.
Loren King
Loren King has been reviewing movies since the ‘80s when she was film critic for The Mass Media at UMASS/Boston. Her film reviews and features have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The Provincetown Banner, Boston Spirit, Chicago Tribune, Bay Windows, Filmmaker, The Advocate, The Credits, Newport This Week, Art New England and many other publications and web sites. She is a frequent interviewer and moderator for events and festivals including the Boston Globe’s “Globe Docs” documentary series. She served as president of the BSFC from 2004 to 2010 and is a reviewing 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, and also a member of 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 The Brattle in Cambridge, The Center for the Arts in Natick (TCAN), and judges the annual 48 Hour Film Project 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.
Jake Mulligan
Jake Mulligan is a freelance critic. He was the associate film editor and film critic for Dig Boston, an alt-weekly newspaper. He hosts a regular film seminar series the Coolidge Corner Theater.
Janice Page
Janice is the arts editor at The Washington Post. Prior to that, she wrote about film for the Boston Globe, where she was the deputy managing editor for arts and newsroom innovation. 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 ex-Programmer for the Boston University Cinematheque, a former Acting Director of the Harvard Film Archive, and a current member of the National Society of Film Critics. He has served on film juries around the world including in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and Hong Kong. An author of eight books on the cinema and once a Fulbright Scholar in Belgrade, ex-Yugoslavia, Peary has made three feature documentaries, For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism, Archie’s Betty and, co-directed by Amy Geller, The Rabbi Goes West. He acted in the cult indie feature, Computer Chess and posts regularly on Facebook.
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 13 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 writes about movies for The Arts Fuse.
Ed Symkus
Ed Symkus, a Boston native, is a freelance arts journalist. He has a weekly film review segment on WCAP-AM (980 on your dial), reviews films and books for The Arts Fuse, and writes features on film and music for The Boston Globe. 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 Critics Choice Association, is co-author of “Wrestle Radio U.S.A.: Grapplers Speak” (ECW Press), plays guitar, shook hands with Muhammad Ali, went to Woodstock, has sailed through the Saltstraumen maelstrom off the coast of Norway, 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 Boston since 2013. She also teaches in Emerson College’s journalism and visual media arts departments. 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 movies for The Boston Globe, MovieMaker Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, and other publications. When the mood strikes, she writes a poem.
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 ofjFilm Critics. Before becoming critic for the Herald, Verniere was a full-time freelance 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.
Sarah Vincent
Sarah G. Vincent is a freelance writer and film critic, who writes for Cambridge Day and sarahgvincentviews.com. Her work has appeared in newspapers, law journals and review websites, and she has spoken on various panels and podcasts. She is originally from NYC, arrived in Cambridge in 1993 and was introduced to the world of repertory cinema while working at the Harvard Film Archives. Sarah holds an A.B. in a special concentration, History and Film Studies, at Harvard University and a J.D. at Harvard Law School. She was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 2001 and is an active member. You can follow her @vincensg on Twitter.
Ethan Warren
Ethan Warren Ethan Warren is a freelance writer with bylines at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Polygon, LitHub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, published in 2023 by Columbia University Press
In Memoriam
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 died on May 15, 2014.
David Brudnoy
David Brudnoy was a founding BSFC member and longtime WBZ radio host who sadly left us in 2004. The New Filmmaker award is named for him and he served as the BSFC president for many years. His reviews appeared in the old Tab chain of newspapers and on WBZ radio. Over the years he had regular gigs at most of the TV stations in Boston including WGBH, while doing a nightly talk show on WHDH and WRKO. His articles also appeared in national publications ranging from the National Review to TV Guide. He later wrote a memoir, “Life is Not a Rehearsal.” Brudnoy earned degrees from Yale, Harvard and Brandeis and was everyone’s favorite instructor in the College of Communications at Boston University.
Boston Society of Film Critics 