Sean Burns

1 week ago | wbur.org | Sean Burns

“When I read about it, I thought, ‘I don't know if I have the energy to sit through a movie about somebody dying of cancer,” admits Independent Film Festival Boston Executive Director Brian Tamm. We’re talking about this year’s opening night film “Come See Me in the Good Light,” which kicks off IFFBoston’s 22nd annual spring feast for movie buffs on Wednesday, April 23 at the Somerville Theatre.

1 week ago | wbur.org | Sean Burns

One would have hoped our society had progressed beyond the need for a remake of director Ang Lee’s 1993 breakthrough hit “The Wedding Banquet.” The premise of a second-generation Taiwanese American in New York City marrying a female friend so that she can get a green card and he can fool his parents into thinking he’s straight — much to the chagrin of his boyfriend — should be charmingly obsolete these days.

1 week ago | crookedmarquee.com | Sean Burns

The sleaziest major Hollywood release of 1986, John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick-Up is an ugly, urgent thriller made by a director with something to prove. Based on Elmore Leonard’s 1974 novel, it’s about what happens when a trio of low-rent, wannabe criminal masterminds try to blackmail the wrong guy. Roy Scheider stars as Harry Mitchell, a self-made Los Angeles machine parts magnate who isn’t too many years off the assembly line himself.

2 weeks ago | wbur.org | Sean Burns

Whenever a documentary touts that they’ve been granted access to areas that are typically off-limits, you’ve got to wonder what’s in it for the organization doing the granting. In the case of Netflix’s new limited series “The Clubhouse: A Year with the Red Sox,” the peek behind the scenes of a floundering Major League Baseball team is a shrewd public relations move for a franchise that honestly didn’t have much to lose.

3 weeks ago | wbur.org | Sean Burns

I understand how insane it sounds to say that a dog gives a great performance in a movie. We all know that animal acting is mostly a matter of training and strategically timed treats. Yet still, I’ll be damned if Bing — the 150-pound Great Dane playing a depressed dog named Apollo in writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s festival favorite “The Friend” — doesn’t deliver some of the film’s most moving moments.