"When we were fourth-graders, Phil wrote and performed a parody of Mr. Rogers. It’s a common enough reaction for a budding culture vulture: to make fun of the sincerity of the gentle TV icon’s work. An approach so easy, a fourth-grader could do it. We first met Mari Heller 20 years ago, hanging out in our circle of similarly sarcastic comedians — and then, as now, she was interested in more than just undercutting earnestness. Her insightful, incisive, curious and, as always, confident new film makes us laugh, but it’s all part of the con. The laughs start with Rogers’ refusal to conform to the expectations of Lloyd, the flummoxed cynical guy who can’t believe Rogers is for real. We begin to laugh instead at Lloyd’s frustration, and before long we are left exposed, without an off-ramp, leading us irrevocably to getting what we secretly came for — to cry our eyes out. Fitting that her film about our fear of emotion is delivered with a fearless emotionality that moves us even as it mystifies. Where are the deflecting jokes that protect us from thinking too deeply about what scares us? Is she just going to like, let us cry? Is Tom Hanks just going to stare into my soul and make me grateful for my family? The least she could do is provide every audience member with tissues. We could write 10 paragraphs on her playful use of miniatures, how she always seems to bring out the best in her cinematographers, how she continually finds a way for the form of her film to surprise while never forgetting to reflect its purpose. We could compliment her knack for getting great actors to give some of their greatest performances, how under her care, Tom Hanks roams the movie with inspired playfulness, genuine caring, and private struggle to be his best self. We could even reflect on how a Brooklyn feminist has chosen this maddening, radicalizing, spine-pretzeling cultural moment to make a film about simply being good, and being good simply. But we would rather focus on her warm, disarming way of letting Rogers’ idiosyncrasies — like his snapping of personal photos or his silly puppet voices — first baffle us into a laugh, the way they did when we were smart-aleck adolescents, and then inspire us to grow up (or not!) and accept his loving embrace."

"When we were fourth-graders, Phil wrote and performed a parody of Mr. Rogers. It’s a common enough reaction for a budding culture vulture: to make fun of the sincerity of the gentle TV icon’s work. An approach so easy, a fourth-grader could do it. We first met Mari Heller 20 years ago, hanging out in our circle of similarly sarcastic comedians — and then, as now, she was interested in more than just undercutting earnestness. Her insightful, incisive, curious and, as always, confident new film makes us laugh, but it’s all part of the con. The laughs start with Rogers’ refusal to conform to the expectations of Lloyd, the flummoxed cynical guy who can’t believe Rogers is for real. We begin to laugh instead at Lloyd’s frustration, and before long we are left exposed, without an off-ramp, leading us irrevocably to getting what we secretly came for — to cry our eyes out. Fitting that her film about our fear of emotion is delivered with a fearless emotionality that moves us even as it mystifies. Where are the deflecting jokes that protect us from thinking too deeply about what scares us? Is she just going to like, let us cry? Is Tom Hanks just going to stare into my soul and make me grateful for my family? The least she could do is provide every audience member with tissues. We could write 10 paragraphs on her playful use of miniatures, how she always seems to bring out the best in her cinematographers, how she continually finds a way for the form of her film to surprise while never forgetting to reflect its purpose. We could compliment her knack for getting great actors to give some of their greatest performances, how under her care, Tom Hanks roams the movie with inspired playfulness, genuine caring, and private struggle to be his best self. We could even reflect on how a Brooklyn feminist has chosen this maddening, radicalizing, spine-pretzeling cultural moment to make a film about simply being good, and being good simply. But we would rather focus on her warm, disarming way of letting Rogers’ idiosyncrasies — like his snapping of personal photos or his silly puppet voices — first baffle us into a laugh, the way they did when we were smart-aleck adolescents, and then inspire us to grow up (or not!) and accept his loving embrace."

"Noir, of course, typically displays shadows, rain, urban darkness, blunt seediness, and the realization that since not just at the end but at the center of things are death and other hopeless mysteries, human striving is meaningless. There’s something soothing about realizing that all is futile. It’s liberating. Kiss Me Deadly might be the most cynical and fatalistic noir of them all. It happens to take place in sunny LA, but it’s certainly got the seediness too, including fantastic location shooting in long-gone slums. It’s one of those flicks that’s too good to be true. You’re stopped alone at a motel somewhere in the desert late at night, dead tired, but you can’t sleep, so you switch on the TV . . . and there’s a near-teenage Cloris Leachman running towards you, moaning and sobbing in the darkness, too blonde and naked to believe. But there she is. What a world. Ralph Meeker speeds up in a Jaguar! Nat King Cole warbles on the radio. Cloris is named after Christina Rossetti! It’s 1955. She’s a bitter feminist escapee from a mental asylum. And it just gets better, all the way till after the last second. Along with the action, corruption, sadism, and sex (when the blonde in her car, who happens to be behind Mike Hammer when he parks in a driveway, is immediately compelled to press herself against him and kiss him, framed with bulging taillights protruding from the fin of the forward auto, somehow it's sexier than the porniest pornography), the photography/mise-en-scène would make this movie immortal alone. It’s the kind of movie that makes me laugh at the notion of “art” photography. A few thousand frames from this one film would make a better life’s work in photography than any artist has yet created. Cindy Sherman has a right to a living like everyone else, but, Jesus . . . Nicholas Raymondo (“Very Smart. Very Bright. Very Sad.”) was “sad . . . for the way the world is,” but as Christina tells us: if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile It’s actually misquoted in the movie, but it’s still probably the nicest thing that’s happened to Christina Rossetti in a hundred years . . ."