IN THE GREY. Guy Ritchie has, for almost 30 years now, traded on his charming, distinctly British brand of cleverness as heavily as anybody in the movie business. In the early days — Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000) — when so many of us were caught up so willingly in the […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inScreens
‘Outcome’ and ‘Apex’ Almost Summit
OUTCOME. Jonah Hill’s second scripted feature — following Mid90s (2018), the documentary Stutz (2022) and number of music videos and episodes of television — might be seen as a response to the erosion of his public image after the leaking of some controlling, sexist text messages to his former girlfriend. Obviously, I can’t say that […]
Posted inScreens
Beneath the Surface
NORMAL boasts more than enough bona fides to excite a certain kind of audience (me): a script by creator of John Wick (2014) Derek Kolstad, again collaborating with star Bob Odenkirk (Nobody, 2021); Ben Wheatley directing; the promise of small-town, Main Street gunplay. Any one of which should be sufficient to assure a good time […]
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‘The Drama’s’ Uncomfortable Romance
THE DRAMA. The immersive paranoid magical realism of Dream Scenario (2023) made it tempting to presume to know what to expect from writer/director/editor Kristoffer Borgli: another fantasia set against the vagaries of the modern world, defined by wild departures from that reality and underpinned by bleak, comic hysteria. To indulge that temptation would have been […]
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An Anti-Star Turn in ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’
MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE. Setting aside his questionable politics for the moment (which may be an understandably impossible task for much of the potential audience), Vince Vaughn remains one of the old-school Hollywood stars who seems to get the brief. And he’s one for whom, despite my own reservations, I continue to […]
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Books in Space
Project Hail Mary PROJECT HAIL MARY. Loving books just as much as movies and credibly accused of being a formalist, I am generally skeptical of adaptations for the screen. I suppose I find works of literary creation something like sacrosanct and will always bristle at the notion that there aren’t enough original ideas being developed […]
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Some Good and Some Gold at the Oscars
Exigent circumstances prevented me from watching the majority of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, an event to which I had (to my own surprise) been looking forward. In the decade since I actually sat through one, my enthusiasm for the movies has done anything but wane. I had to consider why this event should stir […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Stitched Together
The Bride! THE BRIDE! Conceptually, this seems very much like something I could get on board with: a mid-1930s Chicago-set, Mafia-tinged feminist update on the Frankenstein story, embellished with punk-rock attitude and curb-stomping? Yes, of course, who wouldn’t want that? And in the early going, it seemed like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s return to the director’s chair […]
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Dark Suburban Corners
DTF St. Louis DTF ST. LOUIS. Some months ago, in a fallow period likely brought on by the end of a Taylor Sheridan binge, I had resigned myself to listlessly stream-scrolling, nearly paralyzed by the catastrophe of excess. In swooped my younger, frequently wiser brother, who recommended the decade-old series Patriot and, at that entertainment […]
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Too Much, Not Enough and Perfect
NO OTHER CHOICE. It can be a stifling, stymying exercise to sit with one’s own predilections and preferences. Our current, rotten era has reinforced this, of course, but in this case, I’m thinking more specifically about the art and artists we enjoy — revere, even. We hope the work will be both reliable and unpredictable. […]
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The Oscars and Sentimental Value
Sure as death and taxes, the Academy Award nominations are once again upon us. The big news: Sinners has obliterated the previous record for previous nominations. Time now being what it is — some previously unknown, unknowable glue-trap of speed and paralysis — a lot of time has passed since the movie debuted and, I […]
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The Rip is a Genre Good Time
THE RIP. When asked if we really “need” another crooked cop heist movie, I suspect most casual viewers — even cineastes — would say no. As a bit of a dork (I still haven’t earned the nerd title) and a basic genre enthusiast, I would argue that while we may not need it, a crooked […]