ANNETTE. Received rapturously at the Cannes Film Festival — the standing ovation lasted long enough for Adam Driver to smoke a cigarette — this might fairly be interpreted as the long-overdue arrival of the Brothers Mael. That statement, of course, cannot be made, at least by me, without a few disclaimers/asterisks. First, and perhaps most […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
A Pig, an Eagle and a Paranoid Thriller
RIDE THE EAGLE. I did not, do not, probably will not watch the series New Girl. Nothing against it, it just isn’t likely to happen. As such, I know series co-star Jake Johnson primarily from his run of slightly off-kilter, almost on the mainstream radar independent movies, especially the great work he’s done with writer-director Joe […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Anti-heroic
THE SUICIDE SQUAD. It has been five years (sigh) since the misbegotten and now confusingly titled Suicide Squad bowed. At the time, I was hellbent on enjoying the thing, intermittently awestruck as I had been by the work of writer/director David Ayer. Good times meet sad ends, though, and as I lengthily enumerated in this […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Wild Ride to F9
F9: THE FAST SAGA. The thrill isn’t gone, per se, but in having recently revisited the undeniable high-water mark of installments four through six — Fast & Furious (2009); Fast 5 (2011); Fast & Furious 6 (2013) — of this almost ridiculously long-lived franchise, this unlikely behemoth that was never really meant to survive, I […]
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Hybrid Hits
REVIEWS WEREWOLVES WITHIN. Surprise or not, I don’t know a whole helluva lot about video games. I’ve dabbled but that particular swath of popular culture is, by and large, foreign to me. So it brought on some trepidation when, before the title card was even revealed, Werewolves Within opened with a Ubisoft logo. (I know […]
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Behind the Music
SUMMER OF SOUL (… OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED). Intimates might wonder (fairly) at my desire to watch and ramble on about a concert movie. I’ve shared freely my general discomfort and occasional disappointment at the live music experience with those unfortunate enough to have to listen, for years beyond counting. It’s […]
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Retro Dread Redux
REVIEWS FALSE POSITIVE. To dispense with it at the outset: Yes, Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is part of the conversation. It has been for more than half a century. It arguably invented — or at least created a lasting identity for — mainstream American horror movies and, in so doing, created its own ripple-effect of sub-genres […]
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Me, Myself and I
REVIEWS BO BURNHAM: INSIDE. I don’t think I’m alone in having harbored hope that the past year — not to mention the four year season in purgatory preceding it — might give rise to a flowering of reactive art and culture. Maybe a period of collective isolation and simultaneous awakening, of tumult and unrest and […]
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Back to the Big Screen
REVIEWS I certainly didn’t plan for it but I wasn’t alone: Apparently something in the collective consciousness motivated great droves of us in the same direction. Maybe the denial/resignation I observed setting in six months ago has finally become as contagious as the virus that was and is its subject. Vaccination and the promise of […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Poverty of Excess
REVIEWS It has been, oh, 14 and a half months since I last went to the movies. The opportunity has arisen, recently, with the advent of COVID-19 vaccines and, before that, a collective denial/resignation/relaxing of the guard due to fatigue, frustration and, in some cases, willful ignorance. But because of the embarrassment of riches brought […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Adaptation and Survival
REVIEWS THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD. I put a lot of stock in Taylor Sheridan. His screenplays for Sicario (2015), Hell or High Water (2016) and Wind River (2017) — the last of which was his directorial debut — describe a reverence, healthy fear and morbid fascination with the New American West. His work encompasses […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Stowaway’s Taut Drama
I didn’t watch the Academy Awards broadcast this year; from what I’ve read, you likely didn’t either. That I say I don’t care about the Oscars, seeing them as increasingly culturally insignificant and out of step, and yet feel compelled to constantly mention them in this context is something I wrestle with. In fact, I […]