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 Laundromat (2019) Sean Burns Weirdly half-baked and under-realized, the most slapdash of the director's efforts since his 2002 'Full Frontal.' EDIT
Posted Oct 10, 2019
Joker (2019) Sean Burns The movie wobbles under the weight of its own self-importance, carrying on as if imparting some sort of serious social commentary while being extremely careful not to actually say anything at all. EDIT
Posted Oct 3, 2019
First Love (2019) Sean Burns The movie doesn't have a thing on its mind besides mayhem and I enjoyed it enormously. EDIT
Posted Oct 3, 2019
Monos (2019) Sean Burns 'Monos' has a trippy, hypnotic energy that calls to mind such rumbles in the jungle as 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God.' EDIT
Posted Oct 3, 2019
Rambo: Last Blood (2019) Sean Burns A reactionary crock even by the standards of this series, and the dullest of all the Rambo movies by several measures. EDIT
Posted Sep 20, 2019
Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) Sean Burns A heightened, harrowing children's adventure spiked with moments of pure terror, great sadness and pointed politics if you're listening for them. This is one hell of a movie. EDIT
Posted Sep 20, 2019
It: Chapter Two (2019) Sean Burns Just because King makes fun of himself for not being able to write a decent finish doesn't mean we should let him off the hook for this one. EDIT
Posted Sep 5, 2019
La dolce vita (1960) Sean Burns Seven nights become seven mornings, with episodic interludes intentionally echoing one another in provocative, sometimes blasphemous ways, the scared alternating with the profane. EDIT
Posted Aug 29, 2019
Esto no es Berlín (2019) Sean Burns Sama shoots this all as a swirl of sensation, with lots of dreamy, sexed-up montages and druggy interludes. The chronology isn't always entirely clear but what comes through is an intensity of feeling. EDIT
Posted Aug 29, 2019
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) Sean Burns It's the kind of movie that sends you out afterward wanting to read the book, if only to figure out what they were all trying to get at here. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
Blinded by the Light (2019) Sean Burns I spent at least half of the running time rolling my eyes, but every once in a while it won me over. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
Heat (1995) Sean Burns The most meticulously designed of Mann's features, with careful compositions positioning the characters against bustling cityscapes and empty expanses that externalize their interior lives. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
The Nightingale (2018) Sean Burns Kent's gaze is steady in a manner that reminded me of Ingmar Bergman's 'The Virgin Spring' in its unblinking absence of affect, leaving room for the evil to shock us with its flatness and banality. EDIT
Posted Aug 14, 2019
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) Sean Burns Tarantino's warmest film since 'Jackie Brown,' and his funniest since 'Pulp Fiction.' EDIT
Posted Jul 25, 2019
The Lion King (2019) Sean Burns Every aesthetic choice here has been made to tone down the material, making it less vivid, less expressive, less animated. EDIT
Posted Jul 18, 2019
Aladdin (2019) Sean Burns A spectacularly tedious and unimaginative film. EDIT
Posted Jul 18, 2019
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) Sean Burns Above all, it is the ineffable, broken sadness of the haunted alien at its center that registers most powerfully. EDIT
Posted Jul 18, 2019
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (2019) Sean Burns It feels tacky and ungallant of Broomfield to be parading his old relationship around like this. EDIT
Posted Jul 13, 2019
Under the Silver Lake (2018) Sean Burns A millennial, movie-mad hall of mirrors that's designed to drive you a little bit crazy, containing elements both witheringly astute and shockingly lame. EDIT
Posted Jul 6, 2019
Midsommar (2019) Sean Burns A droll comedy of manners, an irresistible revenge fantasy and a warning to bad boyfriends everywhere. It's the best breakup movie I've seen in ages. EDIT
Posted Jul 1, 2019
The Spy Behind Home Plate (2019) Sean Burns There's an overreliance on familiar stock footage and the kind of chintzy production music you hear in industrial videos. It feels like something you'd be forced to watch in school. EDIT
Posted Jun 26, 2019
Toy Story 4 (2019) Sean Burns Mildly amusing and profoundly unnecessary, it's got everything you're looking for except for anything new. EDIT
Posted Jun 20, 2019
Titanic (1997) Sean Burns In recent years I've come around to thinking that a more nuanced version of the tale with better-rounded characters wouldn't resonate as powerfully as Cameron's shamelessly bold, sometimes silly strokes. EDIT
Posted Jun 20, 2019
The Dead Don't Die (2019) Sean Burns This is the first Jarmusch film that feels behind the curve instead of ahead of it. EDIT
Posted Jun 12, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019) Sean Burns A raucous, wildly entertaining collage that spends at least 30% of its screen time pulling your leg. EDIT
Posted Jun 11, 2019
Deadwood: The Movie (2019) Sean Burns The fact that "Deadwood: The Movie" even exists at all is a logistical miracle. That it turned out to be this terrific is cause for celebration. EDIT
Posted May 30, 2019
Purple Rain (1984) Sean Burns At once atrocious and awesome, featuring musical performances so sublime you instantly forgive that the rest is so ridiculous. EDIT
Posted May 30, 2019
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) Sean Burns Teasing their knee-jerk nihilism while taking just as many potshots at the band's detractors, the movie never really figures out if it's come to praise our proto-riot grrrls or to bury them. EDIT
Posted May 30, 2019
Babylon (1980) Sean Burns Rosso's rough-and-tumble portrait of immigrant life in the slums of Thatcher's England arrives in American theaters 39 years late and depressingly right on time. EDIT
Posted May 20, 2019
Double Lives (2018) Sean Burns It's like a TED Talk in which everybody's screwing and I loved it. EDIT
Posted May 16, 2019
Between the Lines (1977) Sean Burns This deceptively breezy comedy has a wistful, end-of-an-era vibe that time has only sweetened. EDIT
Posted May 15, 2019
Rafiki (2018) Sean Burns A boisterous, joyful film about a terribly sad situation. EDIT
Posted May 15, 2019
Her Smell (2018) Sean Burns Moss is miraculous in a go-for-broke performance that leaves her guts smeared all over the floor. EDIT
Posted May 1, 2019
Knock Down the House (2019) Sean Burns Compelling as the other stories may be, you kinda can't help but spend them waiting for Ocasio-Cortez to come back onscreen. EDIT
Posted Apr 29, 2019
The Last Detail (1973) Sean Burns Nicholson is all moustache and bluster. It's a larger-than-life role that grows smaller and sadder as the movie wears on, gradually revealing the limitations of Buddusky's bravado and the fears that churn beneath it. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
The Passenger (1975) Sean Burns It has all the elements of an action movie but remains stubbornly, intractably static. Antonioni is more interested in emptiness, the vast, barren landscapes an externalization of the void inside our protagonist. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
Five Easy Pieces (1970) Sean Burns Nicholson gives a galvanizing performance as a drifter who knows no tribe of his own, an updated anti-hero seething with self-loathing and discontent. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
High Life (2018) Sean Burns An elusive and often shocking movie whose meanings sometimes seem to hover tantalizingly out of reach. EDIT
Posted Apr 12, 2019
Amazing Grace (2018) Sean Burns It's an astounding cinematic experience, elevational and ecstatic even to a wretch like me. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
Diane (2018) Sean Burns It feels steeped in the kind of real-life experiences and hard-won wisdom we seldom see at the cinema. You can practically smell those casseroles. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) Sean Burns It's a movie about a testy, outsider artist and his gang of misfit collaborators, the John Cassavetes biopic once removed. EDIT
Posted Apr 3, 2019
Dumbo (2019) Sean Burns "A Disney blockbuster ending with celebratory shots of a theme park in flames would seem to be a statement of some sort, and if Tim Burton was still the filmmaker he was back in the 1990s I bet he probably could have pulled it off." EDIT
Posted Apr 1, 2019
Ash Is Purest White (2018) Sean Burns A deeply moving and fiercely ambivalent picture about old loyalties, new beginnings and the damnable passage of time. EDIT
Posted Mar 20, 2019
Gloria Bell (2018) Sean Burns This isn't a movie of large ambitions or self-important themes. It's just about life, and how it goes on. EDIT
Posted Mar 15, 2019
Mapplethorpe (2018) Sean Burns Aren't biopics terrible? EDIT
Posted Mar 15, 2019
Captain Marvel (2019) Sean Burns Hearing a Nirvana song in a Marvel movie on the day Luke Perry died felt like a dire reckoning for this Gen Xer. EDIT
Posted Mar 6, 2019
The Image Book (2018) Sean Burns An 84-minute collage with the sensory impact of an audio-visual apocalypse, it leaves your mind mushy and your synapses sizzling. EDIT
Posted Mar 1, 2019
Greta (2018) Sean Burns It's Neil Jordan's most gonzo fairy tale since his unfairly derided 'In Dreams,' and in Huppert he's found his ideal Big Bad Wolf. EDIT
Posted Feb 27, 2019
Todos lo saben (2018) Sean Burns It's what happens when one of our stodgier dramatists teams up with two movie stars who always look like they just finished having sex. EDIT
Posted Feb 27, 2019
High Flying Bird (2019) Sean Burns So brisk and propulsively entertaining, only when it's over do you realize Soderbergh has just made one of the all-time great basketball movies without ever showing anyone playing basketball. EDIT
Posted Feb 27, 2019