Dana Barbuto

1 week ago | bostonmovienews.com | Dana Barbuto

“Warfare” doesn’t just depict combat—it traps you inside. Set during the Iraq War in 2006 and drawn from the memories of real-life Navy SEALs, the film reconstructs a mission gone sideways with granular precision and relentless tension. Ray Mendoza, who was on the mission, co-wrote and directed the film with Alex Garland (“Civil War,” “Annihilation”), offering a firsthand account of the events of Nov. 19. The action unfolds in real time, with long takes and little exposition.

2 months ago | bostonmovienews.com | Dana Barbuto

“The Monkey,” Osgood Perkins’s adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, feels like what every “Simpsons Treehouse of Horror” episode strives to be: frightful vibes slathered in gore, guffaws, and gruesome deaths that are more silly than sinister. In his last outing, the psychological serial killer thriller “Longlegs,” Perkins scared the pants off me with the film’s slow-burn terror despite its convoluted plot. The guy can do dread. “The Monkey” finds him in a much more playful mood.

2 months ago | bostonmovienews.com | Dana Barbuto

Cross “Bride Wars” with “Father of the Bride,” and you get “You’re Cordially Invited”—a union that coasts on the familiar but still-appealing comic personas of Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon. But nothing in the movie was quite gut-busting enough to keep my mind from fixating on Witherspoon’s “super cute” bangs and her daily collagen intake. She is age-defying.

Jan 24, 2025 | bostonmovienews.com | Dana Barbuto

Steven Soderbergh has built his reputation by experimenting with form and content. He consistently pushes boundaries, from Oscar-winning dramas like “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic” to mainstream hits like the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise and ventures like “High Flying Bird” (his second film shot entirely on an iPhone).

Jan 11, 2025 | bostonmovienews.com | Dana Barbuto

“The Last Showgirl,” a character study of a washed-up dancer played by a seemingly washed-up actress, feels surprisingly irrelevant for a movie about striving for relevance. Pamela Anderson, the former “Tool Time” girl on the sitcom “Home Improvement” and Hef’s favorite blonde of the ’90s—gracing the cover of Playboy a record 14 times—stars as Shelly, a veteran Vegas showgirl facing the twilight of her career and grappling with what comes next.