The ARTery

The ARTery is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Sean Burns, Tom Meek
Rating Title/Year Author
The Climb (2019) Sean Burns Would've made my list of last year's best films had there been any way for me to have watched it without possibly killing my elderly relatives. EDIT
Posted Jan 19, 2021
Pieces of a Woman (2020) Sean Burns I suppose one can admire the technical bravado required to choreograph the '1917' of crib death while also wondering why such a thing would be necessary. EDIT
Posted Jan 10, 2021
The Midnight Sky (2020) Sean Burns An unexpected spirit of can-do positivity carries it through to a revelation you can see coming lightyears away, yet made me cry all the same. Look, it's been a long year. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
Sylvie's Love (2020) Sean Burns These perfectly painted sets and impeccably pressed clothes aren't attempting to replicate reality, but rather a dream life in the movies from which people who look like the cast of 'Sylvie's Love' have always been excluded. Until now. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
To the Ends of the Earth (2019) Sean Burns The search for authentic experiences in our over-mediated age can be an elusive one, almost as slippery as this provocative mood piece. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) Sean Burns Boseman's performance feels like the first role in the electrifying second act of a career cut heartbreakingly short. What an incalculable loss. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
Tenet (2020) Sean Burns Garbled nonsense of a most entertaining order, it's basically a Christopher Nolan fetish film. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
Let Them All Talk (2020) Sean Burns Individual vignettes have purpose and snap even if the larger point of it all remains a little fuzzy and out of focus. EDIT
Posted Dec 17, 2020
Chungking Express (1994) Sean Burns Possibly the most endearing movie ever made, it's Wong Kar Wai's most exuberant work, an uncharacteristically sunny, whirling dervish of a picture positively drunk on its own technique. EDIT
Posted Dec 11, 2020
In the Mood for Love (2000) Sean Burns Edited in such an elliptical fashion that feels like you're remembering the movie even while you're seeing it for the first time, there's perhaps never been a more perfectly distilled depiction of unrequited longing. EDIT
Posted Dec 11, 2020
I'm Your Woman (2020) Sean Burns If only the film's execution were half as exciting as its ideas. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2020
Ammonite (2020) Sean Burns A reminder of what a richly, rigorously disciplined performer Winslet can be, and of the sheer volume of emotions she can cram into a lingering glance. EDIT
Posted Dec 10, 2020
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (1990) Sean Burns Coppola's revelatory revision feels like a far more focused and purposeful film, even if there are some things that can't be fixed in an editing room. EDIT
Posted Dec 7, 2020
Another Round (2020) Sean Burns Carries with it a lightheaded, libertine kick, thoughtfully exploring the social structures in which boozing has become embedded with wry humor and a great deal of ambivalence. EDIT
Posted Dec 2, 2020
Hillbilly Elegy (2020) Sean Burns This year's 'Cats,' except with screaming rednecks instead of singing strays. EDIT
Posted Nov 24, 2020
Uncle Frank (2020) Sean Burns Ball has assembled an entire TV season's worth of excellent actors and intriguing storylines, then tries to stuff them all into 95 minutes. EDIT
Posted Nov 24, 2020
The Life Ahead (2020) Sean Burns A tough-minded tear-jerker offering an old-fashioned take on contemporary concerns, tapping into emotions as enduring as its leading lady. EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2020
The Road (1954) Sean Burns A much-needed reminder of beauty and grace at a time characterized by anything but. EDIT
Posted Nov 13, 2020
On the Rocks (2020) Sean Burns It's a beguilingly personal picture, with the First Daughter of American cinema making a movie about a woman trying to find her own light in the shadow of a larger-than-life dad. EDIT
Posted Oct 22, 2020
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) Sean Burns Unspeakably gross, juvenile and containing something to offend just about everybody, it's also sort of sweet. Schmaltzy, even. Or, at least as schmaltzy as a Baron Cohen movie can be. EDIT
Posted Oct 21, 2020
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) Sean Burns Sorkin's best script since 'The Social Network,' chockablock with hyperliterate zingers and groovy grandstanding. EDIT
Posted Oct 21, 2020
Totally Under Control (2020) Sean Burns During a deafeningly noisy time when every day is an information blitzkrieg, sometimes it's refreshing to have someone just lay out the facts clearly and in chronological order. EDIT
Posted Oct 14, 2020
Time (2020) Sean Burns What's special about the film is that it is in the form of a poem instead of a position paper. EDIT
Posted Oct 7, 2020
City Hall (2020) Sean Burns Fredrick Wiseman loves civic association meetings the way Quentin Tarantino loves feet. EDIT
Posted Sep 25, 2020
Goodfellas (1990) Sean Burns I've never seen a movie with such swagger. When you watch it you feel like you're getting away with something. EDIT
Posted Sep 15, 2020
The Hole (1998) Sean Burns A story of lonely hearts in quarantine, longing for love amid the day-to-day drudgery of life during lockdown. EDIT
Posted Sep 11, 2020
Cuties (2020) Sean Burns It's refreshingly frank about class, religion and burgeoning sexuality in ways mainstream American movies would never dare. And who can blame them, given all that's happened to this one? EDIT
Posted Sep 8, 2020
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) Sean Burns At once sinister and silly, this is a most unnervingly edited movie, with clipped conversations cutting to incongruous reaction shots. EDIT
Posted Sep 3, 2020
Lingua Franca (2019) Sean Burns On paper it might sound like your standard social issue melodrama, but on screen it's something dreamier and more elusive. EDIT
Posted Aug 26, 2020
Tesla (2020) Sean Burns Kills biopics dead. The most radical deconstruction of the genre since Todd Haynes had six actors playing Bob Dylan in 'I'm Not There.' EDIT
Posted Aug 26, 2020
She Dies Tomorrow (2020) Sean Burns This strange film is strangely comforting. EDIT
Posted Aug 6, 2020
Yes, God, Yes (2019) Sean Burns There are a lot of bawdy coming-of-age movies but you won't find many this gentle and sweet. It's the warmest, fuzziest film I've ever seen about masturbating to internet porn. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
The Painted Bird (2019) Sean Burns As a culture we cling to the myth that suffering somehow ennobles people and turns them into better human beings, when mostly it just makes them mean. EDIT
Posted Jul 23, 2020
Palm Springs (2020) Sean Burns A genially mediocre time-killer that feels far more at home on your television set than it did on a big screen. EDIT
Posted Jul 9, 2020
Welcome to Chechnya (2020) Sean Burns I must confess I've wrestled with whether or not I'm trivializing serious subject matter when I tell people I spent most of the movie on the edge of my seat. EDIT
Posted Jun 30, 2020
Irresistible (2020) Sean Burns The movie is as clueless as its stumblebum protagonist and a sterling example of everything Stewart attempts to scold. EDIT
Posted Jun 30, 2020
Wasp Network (2019) Sean Burns The former film critic is once again tinkering with story structure the way smart kids like to take apart their toys to see how they work. Even a spotty Assayas film is still better than most. EDIT
Posted Jun 18, 2020
Da 5 Bloods (2020) Sean Burns There are scenes here that will bounce around your brainpan for days after you thought you were done with them. EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2020
Tommaso (2019) Sean Burns An almost invasively autobiographical reckoning of sorts. If the movie sometimes feels like you're eavesdropping on somebody's most intimate arguments, that's because you might be. EDIT
Posted Jun 4, 2020
The Painter and the Thief (2020) Sean Burns It's a movie about how art can change people's lives for better and worse, altering our perspectives of ourselves and the world around us. But it's also about how such work isn't created in a vacuum. EDIT
Posted Jun 4, 2020
Fourteen (2019) Sean Burns A subdued story told through ellipses and accumulated detail. Modest in means but not ambition, the movie sneaks up on you. EDIT
Posted May 15, 2020
Driveways (2019) Sean Burns There's an ease they have around each other, the kind of old-recliner comfort Dennehy specialized in bringing to the screen. I could've sat for hours with the two of them reading magazines on that porch. EDIT
Posted May 8, 2020
The Innocent (1976) Sean Burns The opulent period surroundings are both ravishing and asphyxiating, with these impeccably decorated drawing rooms coming to feel like mausoleums the characters have built around themselves. EDIT
Posted May 8, 2020
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1977) Sean Burns You can see why the film took off the way it did, titillating arthouse audiences with its exotic earthiness and naughty humor. EDIT
Posted May 8, 2020
Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2019) Sean Burns A nifty overview as to why everything is terrible. EDIT
Posted Apr 30, 2020
Other Music (2019) Sean Burns A wistful, welcome reminder of how such places can create a community, with our shared interests and enthusiasms becoming a shared humanity. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2020
Tigertail (2020) Sean Burns A sprawling, multigenerational saga spanning several decades across different continents, Tigertail is also only 91 minutes long, so most of the time it feels like a trailer for itself. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2020
It Started as a Joke (2019) Sean Burns There's a raw power in this footage I'm not sure the filmmakers really have a handle on. It hits upon that primal human need to turn grief into art, to salvage something positive out of all this sadness. EDIT
Posted Apr 4, 2020
Bringing Out the Dead (1999) Sean Burns It's an older, wiser Scorsese and Schrader back together 23 years after 'Taxi Driver' telling the story of another insomniac basket case driving around New York City late at night. Except now instead of an avenging angel he's on a mission of mercy. EDIT
Posted Apr 4, 2020
After Hours (1985) Sean Burns The cruelest of comedies, 'After Hours' makes me laugh so hard I can barely breathe. Not everybody has that reaction, though. EDIT
Posted Apr 4, 2020