Sean Burns
Tomatometer-approved critic
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.
Movies reviews only
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Inside (2023) |
What’s left is the not inconsiderable pleasure of a fearless performer pushing himself to the brink of madness, but I can name at least a dozen other, better movies in which Dafoe also does that. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Moving On (2022) |
Bouncing back from career nadirs shilling in the bizarre vanity project of an increasingly weird Florida retiree, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin recover nicely in this spiky, sometimes ramshackle comedy. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Mar 20, 2023
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Boston Strangler (2023) |
One of the most shamelessly pandering pictures I’ve seen in some time. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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The Boston Strangler (1968) |
A shockingly hopeless look at institutional incompetence in the face of an unfathomable threat. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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65 (2023) |
Do you know why James Cameron never showed us Newt sobbing inconsolably over the dead bodies of her mom and dad? Because he’s an entertainer, not a sadistic moron. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Mar 14, 2023
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Champions (2023) |
There isn’t a surprise in the movie except for how enjoyable it is. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 09, 2023
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Scream VI (2023) |
Boasts the funniest fake New York locations since Jackie Chan looked out upon the mountain vistas of 'Rumble in the Bronx.' - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Mar 09, 2023
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Beau travail (1999) |
The movie is a mass of engorged muscles and entwined limbs; desire rerouted through conformity and cruelty in the rhythm of the night. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 09, 2023
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Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre (2023) |
Feels like the third or fourth installment of a forgotten franchise, one of those late-series entries where everybody’s happy to see each other again and nobody is going to be accused of over-exerting themselves. This is not a knock. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Mar 05, 2023
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Creed III (2023) |
Jordan is let down in a big way by cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau, who flattens all these evocative images into a hazy, low-contrast, digital blur. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
A delicate film of small gestures and the slow building of trust. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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How to Rob (2022) |
A familiar story of two stick-up guys from Quincy who knock over the wrong North End bookie, but beneath the Boston crime movie clichés is a surprising lyricism, building to an unexpectedly emotional conclusion. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
This is slovenly meme s--t designed to be lapped up by insecure audiences desperate to feel like they’re hip and in on the joke, no matter that there isn't one. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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Emily (2022) |
O’Connor gins up a randy melodrama of missed connections, undelivered letters and deathbed confessions in the doomy, romantic spirit of her subject. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Full Time (2021) |
It’s a panic attack of a movie about a single mom during a week when ends won’t quite meet, and how sometimes it takes the stamina of a superhero just to get through the goddamn day. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 19, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) |
These days, the world’s largest entertainment franchise is capable only of churning out advertisements for itself. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 15, 2023
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Marlowe (2022) |
On paper this all sounds perfect, yet almost nothing in the picture works. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Marnie (1964) |
A sinister, unpleasant picture, yet you can’t stop thinking about it. When the movie’s over you want to take a shower, and then talk about it some more. - Crooked Marquee
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) |
Look closer and you’ll see a more serious film about artists in transition, trying to figure out ways forward in the new normals when the old ones aren’t working anymore. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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One Fine Morning (2022) |
There’s a beautiful flow to the picture. I’ve heard it compared to a river, which is one of those things critics say that sounds crazy until you see the movie and then it makes perfect sense. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Feb 09, 2023
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The Eternal Daughter (2022) |
‘The Eternal Daughter’ isn’t a horror movie, but it’s haunted. This is a hotel where you bring your own ghosts. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Fancy Dance (2023) |
A throwback message movie blessed with a natural born movie star. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Bad Behaviour (2023) |
There’s an interestingly aggressive edge to Englert’s staging, a sense that it could explode at any moment. The film feels unfinished, but also dangerous and alive. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Fair Play (2023) |
Critics are hailing 'Fair Play' as the return of the erotic thriller and I feel like I’m being gaslit. First of all, its not a thriller. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Eileen (2023) |
Luckily, there’s nothing straight at all about this picture (in any sense of the word) with its sinister, camp sensibility and this instantly iconic, fiendishly funny Anne Hathaway performance. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023) |
Hite was a willowy, ethereal figure and the film (narrated by a breathy Dakota Johnson) has a wonderfully frilly, feminine texture. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Judy Blume Forever (2023) |
A no-frills portrait that shines with Blume’s sweet, level-headed sincerity. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) |
A film about a beloved performer struggling with a devastating degenerative illness probably has no business being as funny and entertaining as this one. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
Behind the camera, Shyamalan is precise, inventive, and keeps a lot of the action offscreen to make your mind do the dirty work. He also still can’t write. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 06, 2023
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80 for Brady (2023) |
I guess we can add one more broken record to Brady’s roster of astonishing achievements. ‘Celtic Pride’ and ‘Fever Pitch’ are no longer the sorriest New England sports comedies. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Feb 03, 2023
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Play Misty for Me (1971) |
Look, if you’re an up-and-coming actor directing a film for the first and possibly last time, why wouldn’t you devote 4.2% of the total running time to Donna Mills having sex with you under a waterfall? - Crooked Marquee
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) |
"It is a towering achievement in cinema. It's also one of the last films I’d ever recommend to casual moviegoers, which is why the placement of 'Jeanne Dielman' at the top of the BFI list strikes me as such a problematic provocation. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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Infinity Pool (2023) |
It’s an awful lot, yet somehow still not quite enough. So thank goodness then, for our newly crowned scream queen Mia Goth. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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Maybe I Do (2023) |
Little more than Nancy Meyers karaoke, but at least someone’s still trying to sing these songs. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 28, 2023
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Mamacruz (2023) |
The movie is entirely predictable in its plot mechanics yet quietly revolutionary in its insistence on taking the sexuality of senior citizens seriously. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Squaring the Circle (2022) |
It was nice to finally hear the stories behind so many of the T-shirts I wore in high school. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Other People's Children (2022) |
It would probably be impossible for me to not enjoy a movie in which Frederick Wiseman plays a kindly gynecologist. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) |
Expanded from a short that screened at the festival in 2019, it probably played a lot better at 12 minutes. - Spliced Personality
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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Alice, Darling (2022) |
Kendrick plays the role more mysteriously and closer to the vest than you might expect. She focuses everything inward, coming in quietly underneath scenes where other actresses would have cranked up the histrionics for awards consideration. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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All Eyes Off Me (2021) |
It’s a world where everything is no big deal, even stuff that probably should be. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 23, 2023
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The Old Way (2023) |
Gropes around at some promising ideas. But the movie is cut too close to the bone, pulling back to meat-and-potatoes genre beats whenever things threaten to get really interesting. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 14, 2023
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The Seven Faces of Jane (2022) |
As an experiment, it’s not uninteresting. But like most parlor games, this was probably a lot more fun for the participants than it is for the onlookers. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 14, 2023
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Skinamarink (2022) |
You don’t watch the movie so much as you sink into it, allowing yourself to be enveloped by the intensely unsettling atmosphere. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Jan 12, 2023
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A Man Called Otto (2022) |
We know before we’ve even sat down in the theater who’s going to end up taking care of that cat. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 08, 2023
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M3GAN (2022) |
A little smarter and a lot funnier than it probably needed to be. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Jan 08, 2023
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The Long Voyage Home (1940) |
An achingly beautiful movie. - Crooked Marquee
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| Posted Jan 08, 2023
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Broker (2022) |
A gentle movie of great warmth that proceeds from an appalling premise. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Jan 08, 2023
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White Noise (2022) |
You’d never get a movie like 'White Noise' if it needed to make any money at the box office. For the audience, this is both a blessing and a curse. - WBUR’s Arts & Culture
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| Posted Jan 08, 2023
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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022) |
There’s no nice way to say it: this movie looks cheap. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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The Whale (2022) |
An Aronofsky movie without any of the showmanship that makes Aronofsky movies watchable. There’s not an interesting image in the entire picture. - North Shore Movies
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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