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 […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inScreens
The Mysteries of Cloud and Eephus
The year 2025 being what it was — and the less said about that, the better, although the New Year doesn’t seem much better, so far — it was easy to miss some things. No excuse, but the unraveling of the social fabric, geopolitical fuckery, one’s own laziness and the continuing inability of the movie […]
Posted inScreens
On Screens in 2025
So. That has been the year that was. Anecdotally, I can’t say it’s been a good one for anybody who isn’t a despot. Despite having such a futuristic-sounding enumerator, it has been a time of regression, retrenchment and (justifiable) fatalism. Even the movie nerds, those definitive solipsists, have found occasion to gnash their teeth and […]
Posted inScreens
Solo at the Mic
Stand-up from Hoffman, Nanjiani and Chappelle If we’re not laughing, we’re crying, right? Or, more often, both at the same time, in a rictal horror that may never be unmade; it is still 2025 after all. As much as I relish the grand collaboration of the movies, there is something immediate, undiluted and handmade about […]
Posted inScreens
Mother Christmas
Oh. What. Fun. and If I Had Legs I Would Kick You OH. WHAT. FUN. I probably don’t need to defend my undimming affection for Christmas movies, but I am of a defensive, decking-the-halls extraction, so here we find ourselves. I am as aware of all the hypocrisy and bad faith action and indelicate consumerism […]
Posted inScreens
Alone at the Movies
Netflix, Jay Kelly and Train Dreams In the long-ago of my youth, I would often defend my pessimism as realism; I didn’t actually know much about the world. Ever a contrarian, though, as I have aged and hopefully wised up, I find my reactionary nature producing some strain of homunculine optimism, born perhaps of an […]
Posted inScreens
Getting Away
The Running Manand Keeper THE RUNNING MAN. Even back in the salad days of ridiculous action movies, of impossible physiques and ridiculous armaments, The Running Man (1987) struck me as second tier. Maybe because it wasn’t grounded in a recognizable reality, or because it was released so close to Predator (also 1987) and Die Hard […]
Posted inScreens
Monstrous Creations Frankenstein and Bugonia
FRANKENSTEIN. Were anyone to ask (why would they?), I would have said, even minutes ago, that I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus when I was far too young to appreciate its form and content. My bookshelf has made a liar of me, though, yet again: The copy found there is a […]
Posted inScreens
A House of Dynamite’s Harsh Realities
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. “Not exactly escapist fare,” was my first thought, which was followed rapidly by the notion that maybe, in the face of racist, fascist theocracy on the rise internationally, a movie about mutually assured destruction by nuclear annihilation can offer some fleeting relief. I kid (sort of), because A House of Dynamite […]
Posted inScreens
Play Dirty and Shane Black’s Comeback
PLAY DIRTY. Sometimes (often? always?) the thing that suits is a rollicking actioner in the classical mode. Something with gunfights and car chases and heists and revenge, hopefully a soupçon of dark humor and sex appeal, maybe even set at Christmastime — a Shane Black movie, in other words. Black, to use the Wayback Machine, […]
Posted inScreens
Roofman Aims High
ROOFMAN. Putting aside the fact that the early 2000s has been a nostalgia-trip backdrop (which makes me feel old and sad indeed), purporting to be “a true story,” as this movie does, is often cause for concern. It might be a function of my innate formalism or my ongoing, probably misplaced umbrage at the paucity of […]
Posted inScreens
The Smashing Machine Lands its Punches
THE SMASHING MACHINE. In this millennia-bridging era, combat sports are such a ubiquitous element of culture that it almost requires a more active effort to ignore them than to engage. Like garish wallpaper in an over-stuffed room, professional fighting can be fascinating, distracting and off-putting (often all at once) and remains part of all our […]