185 stories by "Gerald Peary"
Screenwriter-director Todd Phillips knows well what he is doing in the calculated way he escalates the bloodshed in Joker.
The post Film Review: "Joker" " Here Come the Killer Clowns appeare…
How is this festival kept off the map from my US colleagues?
The post Film Review: A Rundown from the San Sebastian International Film Festival appeared first on The Arts Fuse.
This tender documentary makes an airtight case that cinema has lost a very special person.
The post Film Review: "Love, Antosha" " A Poignant Tribute to Actor Anton Yechlin appeared first on…
I happily read The Earth Dies Screaming through, all 433 pages of acute, often brilliant writing. And also often funny as hell.
The post Book Review: "The Earth Dies Screaming" " Insistent O…
Echo in the Canyon is a sublimely moving documentary celebration of a nonpareil moment when, a half century ago, the Southern California scene boasted giants of music.
The post Film Review: …
By Gerald Peary When was the last time that the promo short advertising a film festival turns out to be a mini-masterpiece? That's what happened at the 21st Provincetown Film Festival, June …
Joanna Hogg refuses by aesthetic principle to put a lot of inflection into her scenes, steering them away from melodrama and even heated drama. As a result, some episodes are half-baked, ske…
In the case of a scene set in the Lodz Ghetto, the lineup of characters on the way to the concentration camps veered, for me, close to Holocaust porn.
The post Theater Review: Another View o…
If you're the kind of person who coveted every word and wild-man gesture of inebriated Hunter S. Thompson, The Beach Bum could be your movie.
The post Film Review: "The Beach Bum" " Purpose…
"The world is in very bad shape, but cinema in a way is a peaceful life." -- Agnès Varda
The post Arts Remembrance: RIP Agnès Varda " The Most Important Woman Filmmaker Ever? appeared fi…
I saw a handful of fiction films which were well directed, capably acted, and offered meaningful stories.
The post FIlm Review: Signs of Hope for American Indies At SXSW appeared first on Th…
The first three films I watched at SXSW this year were picked by me with the editors in mind. Not coincidentally, the editors also had pedigreed Massachusetts roots.
The post Film Reviews: T…
Greta is a slight, uninspired by-the-numbers genre film -- we've seen this paranoia-inducing tale too often.
The post Film Review: "Greta" " A Tedious, Ugly Stalker Film appeared first on Th…
It is safe to predict that the winner in this category will one of the entries that squares off against mortality.
The post Film Review: 2019 Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts — Wres…
Did I try to fit in at my segregated school, betraying my father and his values to be a popular white boy?
The post Arts Commentary: My Blackface Confession appeared first on The Arts Fuse.
Shame on you, Academy, for such feeble, uninspired, downer picks.
The post Film Review: 2019 Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts — A Bunch of Downers appeared first on The Arts Fuse.
Not since Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up and L'Aventura has there been such a mesmerizing tale of the more you look, the less you find out.
How will PC New Englanders react to seeing nutria gunned down by hunters, and some bashed on their heads to make sure they are dead?
Reading is treated as a commodity, namedropping literary titles as a way for middlebrow film audiences to feel proud of themselves for being in the know.
The Lady from Shanghai is a black comedy of manners, a "film noir" near-masterpiece.
Sylvain Chomet's sublime 2004 feature is a shimmering, knowing homage to the beginnings of sound animation.
In 1957's Pal Joey, Rita Hayworth makes an indelible impression as a screen siren, as sexy as in her '40s heyday.
I made a pledge last week to compromise my movie going, and in a silly, humiliating way.
Womanizing Astaire grasps that Rita is the loveliest catch of all, and a keeper, in this musical treat.
Tony Zierra's film is a worthy and interesting one, but I admit to becoming worn down by the endless litany of unglamorous ways that protagonist Leon Vitali worked his butt off for the geniu…
