Introducing Howard Armstrong: musician, artist, poet, and inveterate liar. Add these traits together (with charisma to spare) and you have one of those rare, idiosyncratic characters the camera can't help but fall in love with, the perfect companion for a sixty-minute jaunt through the dingy urban music halls and lonesome childhood haunts of back roads America. In between spontaneous interludes of music Armstrong entertains the viewer with anecdotes, tall tales and priceless banter, and director Terry Zwigoff simply gives him all the space he needs to ham it up in front of the camera. The result is brisk, professional non-fiction movie-making, but too loosely organized to be considered a traditional biography.
Review of Louie Bluie
