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Sean Burns

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Sean Burns is a film critic for WBUR’s Arts & Culture and a contributing writer at North Shore Movies and Crooked Marquee. He was Philadelphia Weekly’s lead film critic from 1999 through 2013, and worked as a contributing editor at The Improper Bostonian from 2006 until 2014. His reviews, interviews and essays have also appeared in Metro, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, The Boston Herald, Nashville Scene, Time Out New York, Philadelphia City Paper and RogerEbert.com.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Boorman and the Devil (2025) EDIT “Catnip for film buffs. It's one of the best movies I've seen about the making of a movie. ” – Spliced Personality Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Project Hail Mary (2026) 95% EDIT “It’s worth noting that ‘Project Hail Mary’ runs seven minutes longer than ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ and that movie begins with the dawn of man.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Mar 19, 2026 Full Review Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) 75% EDIT “The filmmakers don’t seem to have the slightest clue that pummeling a pretty, defenseless girl’s face into hamburger might sour their cheesy ‘80s music cue humor. The approach to violence is completely unexamined.” – Spliced Personality Mar 19, 2026 Full Review Manhood (2026) EDIT “It’s a grower.” – Spliced Personality Mar 18, 2026 Full Review Reminders of Him (2026) 54% EDIT “A typically Hoover-ian tapestry of tragic coincidences, female fortitude and character names that make you wonder if you heard that right. ” – Spliced Personality Mar 14, 2026 Full Review undertone (2025) 74% EDIT “Indeed, there’s something metronomic about Tuason's deployment of scary sights and sounds. It all feels as prefab and AstroTurfed as the movie’s marketing campaign.” – Spliced Personality Mar 13, 2026 Full Review Sirāt (2025) 90% EDIT “A friend left the film saying he wanted to drown the director in a puddle of radiator fluid. I don’t share his reaction, but I understand it. The movie works you over.” – Spliced Personality Mar 8, 2026 Full Review THE BRIDE! (2026) 57% EDIT “The exclamation point in the title is emblematic of Gyllenhaal’s try-hard approach, which doesn’t always land on the right side of cringe and could easily be exhausting if you’re in the wrong mood. I was in the right mood.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Mar 5, 2026 Full Review Billy Preston: That's The Way God Planned It (2024) EDIT “Extremely compelling.” – Spliced Personality Mar 3, 2026 Full Review Scream 7 (2026) 31% EDIT “Does anyone who isn’t on the film’s poster live in this town? The movie looks like it was shot during Covid.” – Spliced Personality Feb 28, 2026 Full Review The President's Cake (2025) 99% EDIT “The movie is too real to be this phony.” – Spliced Personality Feb 26, 2026 Full Review EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2025) 97% EDIT “The cumulative effect of the film is overwhelming, at times transcendent. ” – Spliced Personality Feb 21, 2026 Full Review How to Make a Killing (2026) 43% EDIT “Nothing like watching a bunch of multi-millionaires say 'Aren’t we stinkers?' while pretending to be on your side. (They aren’t, by the way.)” – Spliced Personality Feb 19, 2026 Full Review The Love That Remains (2025) 94% EDIT “Attuned to the sometimes listless rhythms of everyday life, lingering on household chores and uneventful afternoons to such an extent you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a documentary, if it weren’t so beautifully blocked and shot. ” – Spliced Personality Feb 18, 2026 Full Review Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025) 82% EDIT “It’s like binge-watching a whole season of ‘Black Mirror’ in the middle of a movie.” – Spliced Personality Feb 15, 2026 Full Review Crime 101 (2026) 88% EDIT “Plodding and workmanlike, 'Crime 101' is as prosaic a picture as I’ve seen in ages.” – Spliced Personality Feb 12, 2026 Full Review Pillion (2025) 99% EDIT “The kind of movie your mom would probably like, except maybe for the parts about buttplugs and analingus.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Feb 12, 2026 Full Review Wuthering Heights (2026) 57% EDIT “It feels like a movie made by a 14-year-old. I mean this as a compliment.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Feb 11, 2026 Full Review Dracula (2025) 53% EDIT “I’ll cop to giggling in appreciation more than once at the threadbare exuberance of Luc Besson’s often risible craptacular.” – Spliced Personality Feb 8, 2026 Full Review The Moment (2026) 66% EDIT “As a cranky Gen Xer, seeing the 33-year-old Charli so concerned about selling out is even more endearing to me than her love of Jacques Rivette. I just wish the movie was better.” – Spliced Personality Feb 6, 2026 Full Review A Poet (2025) 100% EDIT “A bruisingly funny tragicomedy.” – Spliced Personality Feb 6, 2026 Full Review Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) 11% EDIT “I saw a film today, oh boy.” – Crooked Marquee Feb 6, 2026 Full Review Melania (2026) 11% EDIT “At least Leni Riefenstahl could frame a shot.” – North Shore Movies Feb 1, 2026 Full Review Blazing Saddles (1974) 89% EDIT “A deeply moral movie that tap-dances on third-rail subject matter and throws around verboten language to call out the violent racism and hypocrisy undergirding America’s cherished frontier myths.” – Crooked Marquee Feb 1, 2026 Full Review A Private Life (2025) 80% EDIT “'A Private Life' isn’t the kind of movie that usually spawns sequels, but I wouldn’t mind watching these aging exes solve more mysteries together.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Jan 29, 2026 Full Review
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