Thursday, June 26, 2014
The Grand Seduction has some mawkish moments, but it’s still a very sweet movie, skillfully made and charmingly told.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:26AMWednesday, June 25, 2014
What’s not to adore about this super-friendly, hedonistic, 24-hour street party, what summer resident John Waters celebrates as “a gay fishing village,” and what I might label, oxymoro…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:30PMSunday, June 15, 2014
Unlike Sundance, where “independent” has been stretched to allow for expensive non-studio movies with slumming Hollywood stars, the films we watched at Seattle were mostly low budget.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:46AMSunday, May 25, 2014
Most of HBO's "The Normal Heart" is a pretty decent adaptation of the 1985 stage script, with some good things added, including an effective pre-credit section set on Fire Island in 1982.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:16PMMonday, May 19, 2014
The best corned beef in the Boston area by far is, get this, at an Italian lunch joint in Downtown Crossing, Sam LaGrassa’s.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:52AMThursday, May 15, 2014
All that WASP self-reliance and fortitude, and I, the Jew, am thinking, “Isn’t anyone getting hungry? Doesn’t anyone want to use the potty?"
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:27AMMonday, April 28, 2014
This fine, partisan documentary resurrects Ann Richards, and it’s showing on HBO in a Lone Star election year. The Republicans better worry about Texans seeing it.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:52AMSunday, April 20, 2014
Little Joe Cook, who died last week at 91, somehow turned his one Top-40 rock hit, 1957’s “Peanuts,” into the centerpiece of a never-ending Cantab Lounge gig.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:50PMFriday, April 18, 2014
It would take a series of spoilers to explain who might have killed whom in "The Galapagos Affair." See the movie and find out, and revel in the grim gallows humor.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:53PMMonday, April 14, 2014
"Silicon Valley" is sharp fun for both the computer lingo-savvy and for the non-Tweet, non-Facebook crowd such as out-of-it me.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:20AMSunday, April 13, 2014
Everyone these days is racing through "Blood Will Out," an undeniably enthralling three-hour read.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:08PM"In Bloom" is one of the best features to come out of Eastern Europe in recent times
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:41AMFriday, April 11, 2014
My first thought: filming Donald Rumsfeld can only be rationalized if it’s a front for a citizen’s arrest.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:16AMSaturday, March 29, 2014
Adeptly directed by Roger Michell, "Le Week-End" soars because of its glorious leads..
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:22AMFriday, March 21, 2014
The first few episodes of HBO's "Doll & Em" operate as a fairly funny show-biz satire, but then the series takes a nosedive into turgid melodrama.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:35AMFriday, February 28, 2014
Are the 16-year-olds in the deep South capable of such a challenging, cumbersome construction task? Especially with the school year coming close to an end?
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:15AMSunday, February 23, 2014
This death trip romance is powerful, weird, and intoxicating -- until its final scenes.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:25PMFriday, January 31, 2014
"Gloria" explores better than any movie I’ve seen how, when middle-aged divorcees become a couple, they are still affected by their relationship with their ex-spouses and children.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:03AMThursday, January 30, 2014
Who doesn’t want to be in a movie?
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:03PMWednesday, January 22, 2014
Without being preachy, HBO's "Looking" offers a fine lesson that being totally out of the closet, as are all the many characters, can lead to a cool cool (and also hot hot) existence.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:32PMFriday, January 17, 2014
We do feel Charles Dickens’s heart tenderly beating, swept away by Nelly Ternan’s poised beauty, and it’s touching in an almost Chekhovian way, his being smitten by a love which can on…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:32AMWednesday, January 8, 2014
Nic Pizzolatto’s scripts for "True Detective" have their moments but, self-consciously literary, they also are painfully overwritten.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:54AMThursday, January 2, 2014
In "A Touch of Sin," four depressing stories float into one other, all said to be based on news stories from Chinese papers.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:28AMSaturday, December 28, 2013
The most unfairly maligned film of the year: Ridley Scott’s "The Counselor." The most overrated movie of the year, which gave me a mammoth headache: "American Hustle."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:25PMFriday, December 20, 2013
"Inside Llewyn Davis" is a watchable if not particularily compelling tale of the never-ending woes of the protagonist, a walking basket case of self-destruction.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:23PMTuesday, December 10, 2013
It’s possible to argue with several of Stephen Sondheim’s selections. Are all of these his best achievements? Yet it hardly matters, because the composer’s tales of his artistic life, …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:33AMSunday, December 8, 2013
The big BSFC winner was "12 Years a Slave," which beat "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Best Picture, Best Director (Steve McQueen), and Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:02PMFriday, December 6, 2013
"Le Joli Mai" is serious and sober, a bit of a downer, climaxing in a lengthy interview with a dullard union official about why he supports the French Communist Party.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:21PMFriday, November 22, 2013
Jennifer Lawrence has blossomed into a charismatic screen presence in her gala return as Katniss, the beloved bow-and-arrow heroine of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:02PMSunday, November 17, 2013
Why haven’t more movies been made about American slavery? Hollywood studio racism is certainly a prime factor; but even for determined anti-racists, there’s also the aesthetic problem of…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:54PMThursday, November 14, 2013
"The Broken Circle Breakdown" sounds fairly enticing and interesting. But beware: the first half of the film is directed in the most conventional way, veering toward a Lifetime movie.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:00PM 
