WICKER. It should come as no surprise that I am not easily charmed by fables, magical realism, period dramas, romance — charming things, really. I could defend my proclivities with the notion that there is already such a great bulk of the stuff, and so much of it tepidly imagined and ineptly rendered, that the […]
John J. Bennett
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Transparency vs. the Truth
YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING. Although celebrity and notoriety have, in this age of commingled and corrupted meaning where interpretation is truth, become functionally one and the same, they remain distinct, even antithetical. Elizabeth Holmes, the perceived wunderkind founder of Theranos now serving a lengthy term in federal prison for defrauding investors and the primary subject […]
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‘Animals’ and ‘Sacrifice’ Catastrophize
ANIMALS. Setting aside, at least for the moment, his acting and his frequently very public private life, let us consider Ben Affleck as director. Making a startlingly surefooted debut with Gone Baby Gone (2007), which benefitted from Denis Lehane’s solid source novel, he then delivered The Town (2009), a riveting Boston bank-robbery/class-struggle picture that just […]
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Predators and Survival
PRIMETIME.In the early 21st century, there was a weird man who created a weird show. He was/is Chris Hansen, and the show was To Catch a Predator, an ethically dubious hidden-camera entrapment program ostensibly designed to apprehend pedophiles but also, as we learn from this fictionalized account, to beat Lost in the Nielsens. The prickly […]
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Reckless Freaks
I WANT YOUR SEX. The milieu of contemporary “fine” art, pinioned as it is to its own ironic self-importance, has always been ripe for satire, with cinema as appropriate a vehicle for it as any. Going back to the olden days of the mid-20th century, when movies were splintering into factions and movements, the outsider […]
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Explode, Don’t Tell
FUZE. Given the death of concise action-oriented picture-stories currently on offer, the promise of such a thing, particularly with movie stars in the cast and a reliable director in charge, is even more compelling than it once was. Factoring in the presence of explosives and a daring heist in the middle of a major metropolitan […]
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‘Idiots’ and ‘Buddy’
IDIOTS. The promise of an R-rated, “gross-out” comedy, especially one anointed for theatrical release, is especially tempting (if equally risky) in an era of corporate trepidation and hobbled creativity. What was once a proven, often overly relied-on subgenre has become risky, a niche proposition unlikely to yield the sort of box-office windfall upon which studios […]
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You Might Go Home Again
GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) is as much a tenet of my marriage as any of the shared values upon which it is founded. For a quarter century, it has been a source of solace, celebration and common ground unlike any other for my wife and I. It […]
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“Super Troopers 3” Keeps it Stupid
SUPER TROOPERS 3. One might rightfully wonder — as I did, while watching Straight Time (1978) on the Criterion Channel on Saturday Night — if there is any reason to go see a third installment of a willfully dumb cop-comedy franchise. At best, it seems unlikely to add anything to the cinematic lexicon (or even […]
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In On the Joke
THE DINK. Awash as we are in a new wave of underdog sports comedies, usually centered on has-beens or never-weres, it should come as no surprise that Pickleball should have shuffled into the crosshairs. The newfound passion of a generation, what was once a middle-school time-filler has become, in this age of idleness and catastrophe, […]
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Homecoming Surprises
THE INVITE was titillatingly teased (for what felt like years) as a sex comedy of manners, a will-they-or-won’t-they about two couples of a certain age circling each other in an apartment brought uncomfortably close by erotic tension. And while it certainly is that, one of the many pleasant surprises it holds — and a testament […]
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Schnabel’s Inferno
IN THE HAND OF DANTE. It can be reflexive — instinctive, even — when confronted with a grand-to-grandiose work, especially one that spans genres as quickly as it does centuries, to dismiss it as muddled, misguided or unaware of its own intentions. But this reaction dismisses the work’s substance, the meaning that compels the artist […]