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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
Melania (2026) 6% 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) 81% 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 Hard-Boiled (1992) 92% EDIT “You find yourself laughing aloud — not derisively, but in gratitude and appreciation because you can’t believe what you’re seeing. ” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Jan 29, 2026 Full Review The Sting (1973) 93% EDIT “‘The Sting’ is both a grift and a great escape. It makes you nostalgic for something that never was.” – Crooked Marquee Jan 16, 2026 Full Review The Chronology of Water (2025) 90% EDIT “128 minutes of this is probably too much. But the sensory overload is integral to the experience. The movie is a piledriver.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Jan 16, 2026 Full Review The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) 88% EDIT “You can see why so many people followed her to America. I’d follow Amanda Seyfried anywhere.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Jan 16, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 92% EDIT “Pandering in a fan service-y fashion. Around the third Duran Duran song I was like, ‘Yeah, we got it.’” – North Shore Movies Jan 16, 2026 Full Review Starting Over (1979) 78% EDIT “It’s affecting work, vulnerable in ways we’re not used to seeing the star. Even Burt’s toupee looks less robust than usual.” – Crooked Marquee Jan 16, 2026 Full Review The Rip (2026) 79% EDIT “Matt and Ben’s ‘Righteous Kill.’” – North Shore Movies Jan 16, 2026 Full Review Is This Thing On? (2025) 86% EDIT “Giving Peyton Manning more dialogue than Dave Attell is what we call a misallocation of resources.” – North Shore Movies Jan 9, 2026 Full Review Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) 81% EDIT “Pokerfaced and exacting even by Jarmusch standards, this is one of those movies that’ll cause some viewers to complain that nothing happens, even though everything does. It all comes in under the radar.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Jan 8, 2026 Full Review The Housemaid (2025) 74% EDIT “A clever little mousetrap of setups and misdirection, with some twists I didn’t see coming because I’m either too dumb or just punchy from serious movie season.” – North Shore Movies Jan 8, 2026 Full Review Marty Supreme (2025) 94% EDIT “I get the Chalamet thing now.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Song Sung Blue (2025) 78% EDIT “Few actresses can light up the screen like Kate Hudson, which is easy to forget because she’s spent the past 25 years starring in garbage. ” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% EDIT “One can be in awe of the effort while also wondering if it’s really worth going to all of this trouble in order to accurately render a performance by Sam Worthington.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Dec 19, 2025 Full Review Ella McCay (2025) 23% EDIT “The whole film feels concussed.” – North Shore Movies Dec 19, 2025 Full Review Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2006) 100% EDIT “In whatever form you may find it, ‘Kill Bill’ remains perhaps the purest distillation of its auteur’s fetishes and fixations.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Dec 4, 2025 Full Review Left-Handed Girl (2025) 98% EDIT “Nina Ye gives the most endearing child performance since… well, since ‘The Florida Project.’” – North Shore Movies Dec 1, 2025 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% EDIT “It seems weird that they didn’t cast Anne Hathaway in a movie about Anne Hathaway.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Nov 25, 2025 Full Review Jay Kelly (2025) 75% EDIT “Does anybody involved have any idea how off-putting and unrelatable this is?” – North Shore Movies Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Sweet Smell of Success (1957) 98% EDIT “Lancaster’s crisp elocution was never put to more satisfyingly sinister ends.” – Crooked Marquee Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Peter Hujar's Day (2025) 92% EDIT “By the end, you feel like you’ve witnessed something dazzling, even cosmic. It contains multitudes.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Nov 20, 2025 Full Review Wicked: For Good (2025) 66% EDIT “There’s a reason Broadway intermissions aren’t a year long.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture Nov 18, 2025 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 63% EDIT “One of those megabudget movies from a major media conglomerate that spouts facile, anti-corporate slogans amid the wall-to-wall product placement.” – North Shore Movies Nov 14, 2025 Full Review
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