V/H/S/99. The year 1999 was a noisy, notable one for movies — it can be marked as the year the movie industry and probably the expectations of audiences at large changed forever, maybe not for the better. After an excruciatingly protracted, admittedly revolutionary advertising campaign, in July of that year, we were finally granted access […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
You Can’t Go to Hell Again
HELLRAISER. Despite the repeated implication — imprecation? — that I am a joyless churl and incapable of sitting in moments of celebration, I am working to embrace the spirit of the spooky season. I probably won’t put on a costume (beyond that of a smiling normie), but I’m making my way through the Criterion Channel’s […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Amsterdam‘s Mystery without Surprise
AMSTERDAM. When David O. Russell entered popular consciousness — with Spanking the Monkey (1994), an Oedipal rom-com that almost immediately went into heavy rotation on the Independent Film Channel — he was not accompanied by the fanfare that greeted some of his anointed indie-cinema contemporaries. Granted, he was one among many, but he was also […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Hollywood, Romance
BLONDE. Marilyn Monroe (neé Norma Jean Mortensen) has been dead now 60 years; nearly twice as long as she lived and a dozen times longer than the period of her working life. Her image, more than her acting work, which is truly formidable, sustains her as one of the undeniable icons of 20th century culture. […]
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Confess, Fletch and Pearl
CONFESS, FLETCH. To a vast, often problematic swath of the population (read: Gen X white guys, to whom I am only generationally adjacent, thanks very much), Chevy Chase is as a god. This is due in part, of course, to his SNL antics, Clark Griswold and his, in hindsight, surprisingly minor, world-devouring turn in Caddyshack […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Last Minute
ON THE COUNT OF THREE. Suicide, for an act (force/influence) that will most likely eventually affect us all, is too often marginalized in culture and in conversation due either to fear, false reverence or simple misunderstanding. It becomes an easy punchline when something doesn’t go our way, or a caustic epithet cum directive vollied at […]
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The Nerd Operas of Funny Pages and Mad God
FUNNY PAGES. While I maintain that I am not a true nerd, mostly for lack of commitment, I may well be, as intoned by my wife and now oft-repeated by dear friend and colleague Grant Scott-Goforth, “a bit of a weirdo.” I am not, nor have I ever been, a true fan/student of comics or […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Waiting for the Letdown
THE REHEARSAL. Noted deadpan Canadian weirdo Nathan Fielder, under-appreciated cringe-lord and spelunker of the depths of interpersonal awkwardness, is perhaps best known for his previous television series Nathan for You (2013-2017), wherein Fielder put to work his perhaps questionable business education and acumen to assist struggling, real-life small businesses. Thanks to his, shall we say, […]
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I Love My Dad and The Forgiven Face Consequences
I LOVE MY DAD. Having recently entered into a misguided, increasingly heated exchange with parties who shall remain nameless (but for their frequent bylines in these pages) regarding the definition and origin of the phrase “milkshake duck,” while simultaneously engaging a Zoomer in spirited debate in order to better parse and decode the appeal of […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Bullet Trainand Prey Ride the Summer Wave
I hate to sound optimistic (ask anybody), but I’ve been developing a theory that, in spite of literally everything, Summer 2022 has become a pretty good movie season. This is due in no small part to my constant, chiggerish contrarianism, which I’ll address momentarily, and to my sadistic satisfaction at the movie-industrial complex maybe finally […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Cha ChaDelivers, Gray Man Delights
CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH It’s not that I didn’t want to like Cooper Raiff (or his work), at least not exactly. But Shithouse (2020), his rather quietly acclaimed feature debut, suggested a number of themes and ideas that, in my insecurity, bitterness and age, seemed like potential emotional landmines. It is, after all, a college […]
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Crimes Fails to Captivate
Crimes of the Future. I suspect the only people ambivalent about the work of David Cronenberg are those who have not seen it. For all the rest, he is a polarizing figure: either a loathsome degenerate or one of the most noteworthy creators working in the medium; OK, maybe both. Matters of taste aside, he […]