On my anniversary of moving to Boston, I present some of my favorite snapshots of the city’s roads, bridges and former cowpaths from over the years. First, Pleasant Street in Charlestown with a view of the Zakim Bridge–likely one of the most photographed streets in the city and what comes to mind when out-of-towners think of “Boston”.
Beacon Hill is also stereotypically Boston for its brick row houses, gas-style street lamps and narrow alleyways.
Myrtle St. at the foot of Garden St., another typical Beacon Hill tableau
Officially, Boston’s oldest neighborhood is the North End, its “Little Italy”. Here’s Charter Street near its terminus at main thoroughfare Hanover Street.
Summer Street crossing Fort Point Channel; I often walk around this area if I have time to kill before catching a commuter rail train at nearby South Station.
Also spanning Fort Point Channel, the historic Northern Avenue Bridge. This was taken 10-15 years ago; presently, it is no longer open to any traffic, pedestrian or otherwise, a shame.
Technically called the Harvard Bridge (most commonly refer to it as the Mass (short for Massachusetts) Ave. Bridge, for that’s the street it’s on), this lengthy passage over the Charles River connects Boston (pictured above) to Cambridge. When the weather’s decent, I’ll often walk across it on my way to work at MIT.
Taken from the Tommy Leonard Bridge, this is Commonwealth Ave passing beneath Mass Ave in the Back Bay, probably the Boston neighborhood I spend the most time in apart from my own (more on that later).
Dartmouth Ave looking towards Copley Square and the Boston Public Library Central branch on the left. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve walked this road from Back Bay Station to Copley Station, I’d be rich. This is from about a decade ago when a sudden rainbow livened up my morning commute a little.
Hereford Street at the Commonwealth Ave mall in the Back Bay during a winter sunset; the view from two pictures above it is one block to the left.
One morning on Louis Prang St. in the Fenway, I came across this on my commute to Brookline; I think it was late in the summer given the size of the birds; no one dared to run them over.
Also in the Fenway, a recent shot of Van Ness St. taken from Fenway Park itself (I was there for a concert.) Of all the rapidly changing neighborhoods in the city, the area surrounding the Green Monster has seen more development than any other place except for the relatively new Seaport District (cross Fort Point Channel and keep on walking to reach it.)
Storrow Drive, everyone’s favorite (and also just as despised) urban expressway. At this posting, we’re less than 48 hours from the biggest, craziest moving day in the city and it’s all but guaranteed at least one moving van or truck will be “Storrowed” (pay attention to those height limit signs, kids.)
We finally arrive at my neighborhood of 15+ years, West Roxbury, the westernmost, most suburban part of Boston. Above, we have main drag Centre St. crossing Bellevue St. In this entire city, you’re rarely more than a 15-minute hike from a CVS (or a 5-10 minute walk from a Dunkin.) Not always a quiet neighborhood, but often a peaceful-looking one. Check back here in another year when I’ll surely be posting something to commemorate my thirtieth (!) year as a Bostonian.
On the Fourth of July, my first task as a child was always to put out the flags. Every year, my parents and I marched in the local parade. By 10 AM, seemingly the entire neighborhood would meet up two blocks away from our house at St. Helen’s parish parking lot where each participant would receive a small American flag-on-a-stick to carry and wave in the procession. The three of us always hung onto them afterwards—I’m certain sticking a flag in the trash would’ve seemed unpatriotic (the worst thing to be on July 4th!) so they sat on a basement shelf 364 days a year, gathering dust and seemingly multiplying. By age 12, we had accumulated nearly three dozen and you can sure as hell bet I planted every single one across our lawn, lining the sidewalks and increasingly any other available space in our front yard.
Once gathered at the lot, we would all walk together the two blocks west to 13th Street to join a parade already in progress. For years, my mom helped decorate St. Helen’s parade float, always covered in red, white and blue crepe paper and similar crafty accoutrements. It usually had an appropriate theme (on the year of the Statue of Liberty’s 200thanniversary, the float featured a small chintzy replica of it.) While my parents walked with other civilians besides the float, I marched as a member of the Cub Scouts, decked out in my navy blue, yellow-and-red kerchiefed uniform (swap blue for tan once I transitioned into Boy Scouts.)
Growing exponentially as other parishes and organizations joined up, the parade swelled to a veritable throng by the time we reached 16th Street. We then all marched four length-wise blocks to Howard Avenue and entered Wilson Park. Our reward? A dixie cup of vanilla ice cream and a flat wooden spoon to consume it with. As temperatures spiked into the 90s and beyond, such a cheap treat never tasted so good (though not the year I came down with a nasty cold as the morning progressed; there’s a snapshot of me looking wretched and green in the face, however complimentary it was to my tan Scouts uniform.) At the park, we never stuck around for the talent competition although we had to at least stay for a judging of the floats. St. Helen’s was named Best Float the first three years Mom worked on it and I’d like to think she was chiefly responsible for these triumphs. Not for nothing had she mastered the art of cross-stitching, stenciling and other household crafting over the years.
Arriving home with our three additional flags in tow, I’d change out of my Scouts duds and we’d drive out to the suburbs to visit another family, longtime friends of my parents we often vacationed with. We’d have a leisurely BBQ dinner of grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob and baked potatoes with melted margarine, followed by fireworks at the local high school’s football field. It was a less impressive display than the “official” Milwaukee fireworks always put on by the Bartolotta Family on Lake Michigan the night before. We honestly had more fun setting off store-bought fireworks in the cul-de-sac by our friends’ home afterwards. Often, when lighting a flying lantern or a spark-spewing colorful fountain, one of the dads might (to a point of seeming almost comic) have to rapidly jump away from the now-lit fuse to avoid getting burnt before the sparks materialized. Us kids were happy as long as we had our handheld sparklers and gunpowder snaps that loudly popped with minor smoke residue when thrown on the ground. I was most fond of those light sticks that glowed when activated by “breaking” them in the middle, tying them to strings where one could swing them around, otherworldly streaks of neon orange, green, yellow and blue illuminating the night sky.
By 16, I had quit the Scouts and rarely attended the parade and/or fireworks because I couldn’t get the day off from a series of menial retail jobs. A couple years later, I’d spend the holiday engaged in more age-appropriate activities like drinking at Summerfest on the Lakefront. One time, my friends and I showed up at the admission gate early on the Fourth to pay our fee to Henry Maier Festival Park for the day and, more importantly, get our hands stamped so we could attend the Violent Femmes concert at the park’s Marcus Ampitheater that night for free (albeit with upper lawn seating.) Each night of the 11-day festival would conclude with fireworks although for us, they ceased to be the main attraction, not when there was Sprecher Beer on tap, Venice Club’s fried eggplant sticks with rich marinara sauce for dipping and Gordon Gano and company wailing out “Blister In The Sun” to an appreciative hometown audience.
A year after moving to Boston at 22, my parents visited me on Independence Day primarily so they could in person watch the Pops perform their annual concert on the Esplanade followed by fireworks. The first year of this ritual, we thought we were clever arriving there by 10 AM to secure a seat at the Hatch Shell. Of course, the concert space and its immediate perimeter were already standing room only. We found a grassy, shady spot further away, out of sight of the stage but presumably with a view for the fireworks. We claimed this space and stayed put all day. Temperatures reaching the mid-late 90s by noon, Mom and I walked over to the Star Market at the Prudential Center to replenish our food supply while my dad sat on a blanket in the shade, thrilled not to have to move.
Dad guarding our space on the Esplanade. I’m now the age he was in this photo!
Even though we couldn’t literally see the concert, we did watch it on a big remote screen set up nearby. When fireworks finally commenced around 9:45 PM, the trees that had made the sweltering muggy day somewhat bearable now blocked our view. We stood up, gathered our blanket and cooler and navigated the crowd to get as close to the Charles River as we could. It was a dazzling display, certainly dwarfing even my hometown’s Bartolotta extravaganzas; still, I remember the crowd more, the Esplanade swarming with a whopping 300,000 people that night. Getting out of there was a lengthy, slow-as-molasses process. We eventually made our way to the adjacent Storrow Drive, closed to traffic so that us and thousands of participants could walk along it to disperse from the masses all the way through Kenmore Square and down Beacon Street to my parent’s hotel in Brookline.
Folks viewing the Esplanade Fireworks from the back of a Beacon Street highrise, 2009.
My folks came back to Boston three more times for this exact experience over the next decade. On the second of these return jaunts, I met up with them for lunch in the North End, then parted ways, strategically deploying the excuse of attending a party at a friend’s house in Cambridge. Fortunately, I still got to see fireworks that night as a dozen of us walked a mile or two from the party down to the Charles River to watch the display from the opposite side. A decent crowd had accumulated, albeit less than a tenth of the size of that on the Boston side. If I had lived in Cambridge, I’d consider making this an annual ritual. Instead, pushing 30, the tradition had lost some of its urgency. By then, I’d seen dozens of fireworks displays. In years to come, I felt satiated watching the Esplanade fireworks on TV (and often, not at all.) Call me officially an Old Man at that point. When my parents reached their 60s, they decided they had enough of the crowds as well and never requested to visit Boston on Independence Day again. Amazingly, they still hung on to all of those flags of my youth long after moving to another state. They finally disposed of them at a sanctioned burning of old flags (thrown by the local Boy Scouts, no less.) However, before giving them over to the flag inferno, my parents we required to remove all the sticks, tearing off a couple dozen of them one by one.
These days, for me the Fourth of July is strictly a day of rest and relaxation—in other words, a typical holiday. I usually try to grill on my back patio with a menu not far off from the dinners we shared with the other family back in the day (though I would never, ever use margarine.) With the current dubious political climate, I don’t feel a strong sense of patriotism anymore, especially as it’s increasingly twisted for ideological gains. Still, as frustrating, disillusioning and just plain backwards as it can be, I love my country, my home, the environment that made me who I am. Its flaws only provide motivation to stay here, fight the power and work together to make things better for everyone. On the occasion of the United States of America’s 250th Birthday, I may even watch the Esplanade fireworks on TV tonight.
1. The Lobster Pot in Provincetown, Mass. Commercial Street is unimaginable without its piercing red glow.
2. Deluxe Town Diner, Watertown, Mass. I lived a ten minute walk away in the early 2000’s and can still sense the delicate taste of their sweet potato pancakes.
3. Rosebud Bar & Kitchen, Davis Square, Somerville, Mass. Now the fancy front of a restaurant attached in the back, I ate this a few times back in the day when it was merely a diner (and the food was never as good as the Deluxe Town Diner’s.)
4. Bunghole Liquors, Salem, Mass. A favorite of weird-and-naughty-signs-aficionados far and wide.
5. Becky’s Diner, Portland, Maine. Not sure how vintage the arrow is, but it is undeniably beautiful.
6. Strand Theater, Rockland, Maine. I’ve never been inside but this sign is an exclamation point on this coastal city’s downtown strip.
7. Leon’s Frozen Custard, Milwaukee. I could write a whole essay on the frozen custard stands of my hometown. It’s probably the third-best in terms of taste but certainly number one in design.
8. Miller High Life, some random bar on Kinnickinnic Avenue in Bay View, Milwaukee. Of course it’s Milwaukee!
9. The General Store, Valley Junction, West Des Moines, Iowa. Spotted on one of my last visits when my parents lived there.
10. Duffy’s Cherry Cricket, Denver. Ate at a restaurant nearby on a visit a decade ago. Maybe I’ll check it out when I’m back there a few weeks from now.
11. Taos Inn, Taos, New Mexico. Probably my favorite neon sign of this group. Respect the eagle!
12. C.O. Bigelow Drugs, Manhattan. No trip to NYC for me is complete without a stop here.
13. Colony Theatre, Miami Beach. Have not seen inside and I fear it would not fully live up to this exterior, taken on a December Thursday evening.
14. Southern Cross Hotel, Key West. One doesn’t see so much yellow-greenish neon; it’s stunning.
15. Salsanera, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. This stopped me in my tracks on a visit nearly ten years ago; no way was I going to walk by without a snapshot of it.
At the start of 2022, a new job gave me a reason to cross the Longfellow Bridge across the Charles River in Boston on a regular basis.
I often prefer walking it to taking the ever-more undependable Red Line T along it, except when it’s too cold, of course.
In the warmer months, however, it’s a treat. I often feel moved to take a few shots of the Back Bay skyline.
Granted, I can also see the skyline along Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side of the river.
Still, this angle from the Longfellow Bridge, with its particular composition is one of the city’s best, even in the morning as a rare fog gradually lifts.
I’ve usually left the area before dark, but on one unseasonably warm evening last December, I found myself impulsively walking across the bridge before catching the T home at Charles/MGH station. Sometimes I grumble about having to cross this bridge; more often, I’m just happy to revel in the beauty of my adopted city.
Getting there required crossing the Blue Line MBTA tracks via this suitably blue-lined overpass.
Walking up the overpass, I felt as if I was on a footbridge rollercoaster.
According to this, the overpass was opened and named for Anthony and Dee Dee Marmo in September 2001 (no conspiracy theories, please!)
One but can’t help but notice its electric blue curves.
And on the other side of Marmo Overpass, it’s the beach!
It was pretty deserted on an unseasonably chilly Friday in early May.
Although I would’ve liked to have seen more activity, I have to admit I appreciated the solitude.
At the beach’s south end sits a residential neighborhood that juts out east towards the coastal suburb of Winthrop.
I must have arrived at or near low tide.
According to a municipal sign (not pictured), the beach is officially open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so I was only weeks away from enjoying a hot dog from Selma’s Kitchen or a cup of Richie’s Italian Ice.
Looking south towards Porrazzo Skating Rink and beyond that, the familiar sight of Logan Airport Tower. In my last post, I mentioned I haven’t had a reason to return to Orient Heights (I live on practically the opposite end of Boston), but if I ever find myself out that way again, I’ll revisit Constitution Beach (that is, if it’s not too cold and windy.)
On a Friday afternoon in May 2016, I took a Blue Line MBTA train out to Orient Heights (according to Wikipedia, Boston’s northernmost and northeasternmost neighborhood) simply because I could. Having previously taken the line all the way to its terminus at Wonderland station in Revere Beach, I had never stopped anywhere along the way between it and Logan Airport.
If Orient Heights has a landmark, it’s the Madonna Queen of the Universe Shrine, the front of which is visible (albeit from a distance) from Route 1A; its back (the tall, narrow structure above) faces most of the actual neighborhood.
Otherwise, this is another average residential neighborhood accessible by T but not much of a magnet for tourists or visitors. (As of 2021, the tire shop with the vintage signage above is now a cell phone store.)
It’s an enclave mostly stuck in various past eras.
This antiquated siding is something you rarely see in Boston’s hipper neighborhoods (as well as business names with curiously placed periods.)
Of course there’s a Chinese-American restaurant with stereotypical signage and lots of red.
No name, just billiards, presumably.
As of 2023, the Beverly Richard Dance Center is still in business (I wonder if there’s much crossover with the billiards place?), as is Oxigen.J and Great Chef.
A look at Google Maps confirms Peter J. Martino, Jr. is still practicing (along with fellow Martino’s Nicholas and Justin) but the storefront to the right has been refurbished into the much brighter (if still Japanese) Sunny’s Cafe. Victory Pub is now called Renegade’s Pub and doesn’t appear to have changed much (at least on the outside.)
The intersection of Bennington and Saratoga Streets where Route 145 curves right from the former onto the latter with Orient Heights MBTA station in the distance. I haven’t had a reason to return to Orient Heights, although on that one visit I also came across an interesting piece of municipal architecture that I’ll post about next week.
I’ve always been a proponent of being a tourist in one’s own town; having taken many pictures documenting the city’s iconic spaces over the years, here are a baker’s dozen that you likely won’t find on a tourism map or website.
We begin in Louisburg Square, arguably the toniest enclave of Beacon Hill, the city’s toniest neighborhood. I don’t remember this old-fashioned mailbox always being there although it’s possible someone may have recently painted or gussied it up. Sitting along old row homes and cobblestone sidewalks, its antiquity fits right in.
A couple blocks away on Beacon Street near the State House sits this somewhat dingy luncheonette which, at least from the outside hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1977. I haven’t tried it (as with most downtown eating places, it’s only open during working week hours) but I’d be sad if it ever closed for good as it’s part of a vanishing breed gradually being taken over by your Cavas, Sweetgreens and Chipotles.
A Google search reveals that Scotch n’ Sirloin, a restaurant overlooking a stretch of I-93 that wasn’t entirely consumed by the Big Dig twenty-odd years ago closed in 1991 and yet the sign remains (the above photo is from December 2020) and likely will until the building gets rehabbed or torn down.
For years, this truck for Kitty’s Restaurant and Lounge in the far North suburbs has been a fixture at Haymarket. I don’t know why, exactly, but it’s always parked there and I rarely fail to notice its distinctive logo.
The North End is a tourism Mecca but out-of-towners tend to flock there for the restaurants, the Italian pastries, the Freedom Trail, etc. People actually live there too and occasionally need to service their vehicles (though let’s face it, the word “LUBRICATION” caught my eye more than anything else.)
Also spotted in the North End: a fake owl on top of a tow-zone sign. I don’t get it, either.
On the opposite end of downtown is Boston’s Chinatown, an ideal spot for Dim Sum but perhaps not so much for those seeking medical attention. My first thought upon seeing this unflashy dated signage in 2015 was, “Oh, really?”; according to Google Maps, work was being done on it as of 2020.
Speaking of dated signage, when Copley Place mall in the Back Bay began finally updating their 1980s-designed interior a few years ago, I knew I had to get a shot of this, located in hallway next to what was then Barney’s (and, long ago, a multiplex cinema with postage-stamp sized theaters) and is now Saks Fifth Avenue Mens’ Store.
A few blocks from the mall, probably on Marlborough St. or Commonwealth Ave. The neighborhood rivals (probably exceeds) Beacon Hill in terms of wealth, yet I tend to see the most elaborate (not to mention unsettling) Halloween decorations there every year.
Stepping away from Central Boston, it’s the Marmo Pedestrian Overpass in Orient Heights, a section of East Boston that I visited in May 2016 simply because I could (the Blue Line T goes out there.) It’s a pleasant, unremarkable neighborhood, most notable for Constitution Beach and this colorful footbridge. I posted a bunch of pix from there on my now-defunct Tumblr and maybe I’ll repost some of them here one day.
From East Boston to the city’s Westernmost boundary, which happens to be a ten minute walk from where I currently live. I’ll post an entire essay on West Roxbury some other time, but for now, here’s Sawmill Brook at Millennium Park, a vista I’ve taken dozens of shots of over the years; it’s almost as far West as one can go while staying within the city limits.
I was going to conclude with this whimsical hydrant on a residential West Roxbury street that I got to know well via many pandemic-era neighborhood walks.
However, I spotted this twin hydrant one street over the other day. Now I’m curious as to whether others exist throughout this neighborhood and beyond. Stay tuned.
Continuing a tradition, here is a selection of color shot in and around Boston during my favorite time of year. Above is the Charles River Esplanade as seen from the Longfellow Bridge. This is a few days before Daylight Savings Time ended; as of today, I’m doubtful much foliage is left.
A burst of yellow on the Esplanade with the Arthur Fiedler statue in the right background.
The Boston Public Garden one brisk morning this past week.
The Garden’s easily one of my favorite spots in town. When I took this photo, I noted how it was a reminder as to why, after moving here decades ago, I stayed.
Across the Charles and over to JFK Park near Harvard Square on an idyllic Saturday morning.
In late September I first noticed how unusually… robust the color was this year. Chalk it up to the summer drought, the subsequent rain, global warming or chance. Either way, I made time for a visit to Mt. Auburn Cemetery on the Cambridge/Watertown border, a place I didn’t make it to last year.
My mom has asked me, “Why go to a cemetery to take pictures?” Here’s one reason…
…and another. Mt. Auburn often feels as much of an arboretum as it does a cemetery.
We conclude on Millennium Park in West Roxbury – a ten minute walk from home and thus a park I’ve spent more time in than nearly any other in the area.
The trees were noticeably sparser than they were just five days before I took this one. Luckily, flashes of that rare autumnal red remained.
IFF Boston’s Fall Focus is a counterpart to their main film festival in late April/early May (in my opinion the best in the area.) Since this offshoot began about 7 or 8 years back, I’ve caught titles there such as Anomalisa, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Cold War and Shoplifters. After an online-only edition in 2020 and my skipping it last year, it was a treat to return. Of the eleven films playing over four days (plus two bonus titles afterwards), I saw these three.
WOMEN TALKING
Sarah Polley’s return to directing after a decade carries almost ridiculously high expectations due to her previous, consistently strong body of work (Away From Her, Take This Waltz, Stories We Tell) and all the awards season hype already showered upon this new film, which Polley adapted from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel. Happily, Women Talking mostly meets them.
Set in a remote, rural, unnamed religious community (though Mennonite seems most likely), it revolves around an emergency, clandestine meeting among about a dozen of its women. Upon discovery that some of their men are drugging and raping them, they debate whether all the women should stay and fight back or leave the settlement with their younger children. It takes place in the near-present, though with the addition of an unlikely musical cue it could reasonably be any time since the late 1960’s; it also leaves open the possibility that it could even be in the near (or remote) future.
Much of it is exactly what the title promises: the women process the dilemma before them, discussing and arguing at length the implications of what courses of action are available to them. If this sounds dry and overly, well, talky, it’s visually far less static and isolated than something like last year’s (admittedly great) Mass. Polley not only sculpts dialogue to ebb and flow naturally like a good screenplay should, she also comprehends the value of opening up this world cinematically when the time is right for it. As the camera moves around and sometimes away from the barn where much of the action occurs, one can usually sense Polley’s hand as an additional unseen character right beside the women, reacting to and often enhancing what transpires.
The superb ensemble cast includes indie-friendly stars (Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy), Canadian stalwarts (Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod), revered veterans (Judith Ivey and in a smaller role, Frances McDormand) and Ben Whishaw as the sole on-screen adult male, a sympathetic school teacher asked to take minutes of the meeting (most of the women there are not taught to read and write.)
As the women work their way towards decisive action, the film accumulates considerable power, laying out what’s at stake for these characters, illustrating their turmoil (but never in an exploitative way) and placing it in a larger context that strives to be universally applicable. Occasionally, the story oversteps, simplifying logistical concerns for actions taken; the final section also drags a bit, reiterating ideas and emotional beats already touched upon. However, those are minor missteps. The world Polley depicts is contained to the point of being restrictive; Women Talking, with great catharsis and reasoning explains with artful clarity as to why this is damaging and what future generations can do to avoid succumbing to such a closed-off, incomplete life. (4.5 out of 5)
BROKER
After a brief sojourn in France (The Truth), director Hirokazu Kore-eda made this movie in South Korea rather than his home country of Japan, purportedly so he could work with the actor Song Kang-ho (he was most recently the patriarch in Parasite.) As with its predecessor, the shift in locale does not mean any departure in style or tone, though some parts of Broker might comprise his most overtly comedic work in years.
The plot, however, is the stuff of drama and suspense. Two men, Sang-hyun (Song) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) run an illegal business in Busan where they steal abandoned infants from a church’s drop-off box and sell them on the black market. It works swimmingly until So-young (singer/songwriter IU), a teenage mother in the process of dropping off her own baby discovers their scheme and joins them to interview prospective adoptive parents. Meanwhile, two detectives (one played by Kore-eda alumnus Doona Bae, now middle-aged but still fabulous) sit in their unmarked car and watch this all play out.
Although Broker won the Jury Prize at Cannes, it isn’t on the same level as Kore-eda’s very best work (my top four, chronologically: After Life, Nobody Knows, Still Walking, Shoplifters.) Actually, it’s slightly flabby (maybe 10-20 minutes too long) and although he retains a knack for getting amusing (but not irritating!) performances out of children, this film’s humor and pathos do not always sit comfortably alongside each other. Of course, as veteran auteurs go, Kore-eda is still in a class of his own. He may be relying on variations on familiar themes, but no one else matches his sustained comfort and nimble touch with depicting makeshift families and finding those ingenuous, unforced grace moments that co-exist with the mundane. (4 out of 5)
ARMAGEDDON TIME
The latest from writer/director James Gray is almost nakedly autobiographical. His 11-year-old alter ego, Paul (Banks Repeta) lives in Queens, 1980 (as Gray did), the younger son of a middle-class Jewish-American family whose grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) arrived at Ellis Island near the turn of the 20th century. A would-be artist prone to daydreaming with little traditional work ethic in him, Paul befriends Johnny (Jaylin Webb), an African-American classmate who was left back the previous year and is barely tolerated by their public-school teacher. His friendship with Johnny doesn’t so much open up a new world for Paul as it gradually puts into perspective his own place in the world and how his race and class afford him privilege; meanwhile, his grandfather helps him to understand the complexities of bearing such privilege along with the moral and ethical implications at risk as a result.
Gray gets the period look and feel exactly right but sometimes struggles with other details. Apart from Hopkins, Paul’s family can come off as stereotypical-verging-on-cartoonish; even worse, Johnny’s barely a character at all, a sacrificial lamb for Paul to learn from. The insertion of two real-life figures related to a former president also feels a little clumsy, reiterating the overall point by practically banging it into the ground. On the other hand, the film would fall apart without Repeta’s naturalistic performance; he’s certainly one of the more plausible 11-year-old film protagonists, itself a tough age to depict in that Paul is still an innocent child to a degree but also easily corruptible. Of the few Gray films I’ve seen (Ad Astra, The Immigrant) this is somehow the most satisfying but also the most flawed, which frustrates–I repeatedly sensed that he’s just too close to the material even though it’s undeniably his story to tell. (3 out of 5)
Haunted Jukebox 