Friday, May 1, 2015
I’ve served on several dozen film juries about the globe in the last three decades. I can’t recall ever having a choice of so many splendid films from which to award a grand prize.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:11AMSunday, April 5, 2015
At a mere 1 hour and 34 minutes, Chuck Workman's documentary about Orson Welles is rushed and sometimes choppy, leaping through the filmmaker's bountiful life.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:25AMTuesday, March 31, 2015
Robert Christgau, the author of 14,000 record reviews, mostly in his decades as music editor of Village Voice, makes the case for expansiveness as the best aesthetic.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:47PMWednesday, March 25, 2015
The Zellner brothers’ excellent film is inspired by a Japanese urban legend of a young woman who came to America supposedly because of Fargo, and then committed suicide in the snows.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:35PMMonday, February 23, 2015
Director Abderrahmane Sissako wants the viewer to have the golden-age city in mind when, today, 2015, we see how terrible life has become there.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:13AMFriday, February 13, 2015
What Oscar Wilde was peddling in America was beauty. Art for art’s sake. Gorgeous flowers. Ravishing colors.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:16AMFriday, February 6, 2015
These films demonstrate what’s often so great about documentaries: here’s where you find real courage and everyday heroism, and not in mythic, muscular, blockbusters.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 01:11PMThursday, January 29, 2015
Why did Patton Oswalt submit himself, for a time, to drowning in movies? I never quite understood that..
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:07AMTuesday, January 6, 2015
What is served at Wasabi is so-o-o-o fresh.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:01AMMonday, December 29, 2014
Perhaps Top Five is Chris Rock's penance for doing lucrative-paying voices for the insanely popular Madagascar animation franchise.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:58AMFriday, December 19, 2014
Ace film blogger Farran Smith Nehme's first novel grows directly out of her adoration of classic American cinema.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:59AMFriday, December 12, 2014
Are men totally useless in Zero Motivation? Well, they can come in handy when you want to use one of them as a sexual object.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:43PMFriday, November 28, 2014
Tommy Lee Jones's The Homesman could have been an old-fashioned Hollywood Western. Thankfully, it isn't.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:34PMSunday, October 26, 2014
So what’s the verdict on The Irish Pub? A well-meaning film, but lacking in excitement.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:57AMWednesday, October 15, 2014
Why, when finally caught, didn’t mark Landis land in jail? Here’s the rub. He was a consummate liar and a big-time deceiver but he’s never committed a jailable crime.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:42PMSaturday, October 11, 2014
There’s no debate: The Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel, with Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn as also-rans.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:28AMWednesday, October 1, 2014
Playwright Harold Pinter is behind the austere screenplay, keeping things puzzling, an often silent script punctured with bursts of cryptic, hostile dialogue.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:53AMFriday, September 26, 2014
Contextualizing is everything. And that’s particularly true of Last Days in Vietnam, where the odious things Americans did there weigh down the ostensible heroics shown in our exiting the …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:51PMThursday, September 18, 2014
The highest praise for the way the great cinematographer Bridger Nielson has lit the film's haunted house..
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:45AMTuesday, September 16, 2014
Jealousy is a misleading title for this touching movie, as the characters are less jealous than forlorn when those they love move on to other loves.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:53AMWednesday, September 3, 2014
It would be a great pity if the MWFF, with its luminous history, was put out to pasture.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:21PMWednesday, August 27, 2014
Seeing Exhibition is like spying through a window on our most glamorous neighbors moving about their flat: it’s kind of kinky, kind of fun.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:39AMThursday, August 21, 2014
If Van Gogh had picked up an acoustic guitar, he’d be Frank.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:52AMFriday, August 15, 2014
Under relaxed house arrest, Iranian director Jafar Panahi bravely concedes that, at times during his incarceration, he’s worn down, tempted to end it all.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 07:07PMI like to believe that I’m not loony, that, unlike certain 78 collectors profiled by Amanda Petrusich, I have a perspective on all this.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:26AMTuesday, August 5, 2014
I’m miffed that three of the greatest documentaries ever produced, all from around Boston, didn’t make the cut on the Sight & Sound list.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:38AMWednesday, July 23, 2014
Like me, Phyllis Rose frets about the zillion fine books out there that nobody bothers with. Why their neglect? She reasons that it’s because no one pedigreed has championed them.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:25PMFriday, July 18, 2014
So what was so impressive about the lineup of films at the 17th Maine Fest? Catnip for me are 35mm films on the big screen..
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:55PMFriday, July 11, 2014
A Coffee in Berlin is described accurately in its publicity as “a slacker comedy.”
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:57AMSunday, June 29, 2014
The haughty, witty Gore Vidal, my role model, was never happier than when going against the madding American populace.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:00PMThursday, 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 10:26AM 
