While "Carriage Trade" is still sometimes considered his masterpiece (Sonbert himself once called it "my magnum opus"), the critic Paul Arthur has argued that "with every successive film the overall shape and rhythmical patterning shift in relation to a particular exploration of theme or set of motifs." In the late 1980s, Sonbert began again using music, but now it was often classical music, as in the final section of "Friendly Witness" (1989), which had its premiere at the New York Film Festival, as did "Short Fuse" (1992), with its even more diverse musical accompaniment whereby, Paul Arthur wrote, "the goal of creating a soundtrack that would not simply amplify or subvert themes already embedded in the images but operate semi-independently within a larger structure of meaning was finally realized." "New York Times" reviewer Stephen Holden noted that "Short Fuse" pictured "a world in which almost everybody is hard at play. Surfers, a basketball game, parades, hang-gliders, amusement park rides, Las Vegas casinos and all kinds of fun are shown ... But not all is frolic and joy. There are vintage film clips of air and sea battles from World War II shots of violent demonstrations in San Francisco ... by the AIDS protest group Act Up ... The film expresses its political rage almost subliminally ... in contrasting the winning of World War II with the fight against AIDS ... that hasn't been won."