Previews FIRST MAN. “Hey Girl” memes and references to The Notebook (2004) aside, Ryan Gosling has become one of the most versatile, self-challenging leading men in Hollywood, with a constantly growing filmography to reflect it. Now he works almost exclusively on major releases for prestige directors but he brings intense focus and emotional depth to […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
Venom Has Teeth
Reviews VENOM. As much as I am loath to describe and discuss yet another Marvel movie (where are the emojis on this thing?), I admit a sense of morbid curiosity with this one. I’m prone to root for the underdog and, even when that dog isn’t exactly under anything (see Deadpool 2), a lower profile […]
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Long Nights
Reviews NIGHT SCHOOL. Kevin Hart, like his frequent costar Dwayne Johnson, lives by hustle. One of the biggest stand-up comics in the world, he came by it honestly, after decades working his way through thankless club dates and TV development deals that went nowhere, until he became the sort of entertainer who holds arenas in […]
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No Filter
ASSASSINATION NATION. This far into our waking national nightmare, when hours seem like days and each sunrise reveals more desperate attempts to hamper or undo the personal, social and legal freedoms we’d have define us, it can be difficult to identify new developments to be thankful for. There is hope at the national level, I […]
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Stylish Monsters
Reviews A SIMPLE FAVOR. The thing here is style: a modern noir about a missing person, a psycho-sexual thriller soaked in gin and dressed in devastating clothes, played out in a gorgeous, antiseptic ultra-modern house. That’s only a little less than half of it though, the veneer of the part of the story dominated by […]
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Peppermint’s Not So Fresh
PEPPERMINT. Due to the recent and ongoing action movie renaissance, there is in every new shoot ’em up the hopeful possibility of transcendence, or at least a couple of entertaining hours. But for every Atomic Blonde (2017) there must of course be a Peppermint and the pattern of hope despoiled continues. I cite Atomic Blonde […]
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Puppets in L.A.
THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS. So they’ve got this this LA detective noir filled with violence and drugs and sex, enacted by puppets — Henson puppets, no less! — and Melissa McCarthy? That’s gold, by my lights. Or at least it should be; it’s just that somebody has to do the hard work to take a fun, […]
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Monsters Back from the Past
Reviews BLACKKKLANSMAN. I’ve never subscribed to the notion that hatred is borne of fear. There’s truth to it, I suppose, but it has always seemed to me an attempted defense of something indefensible. Fear is natural and necessary, hatred is useful only in fomenting hatred. To offer fear as the source of hatred seems to […]
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Long Lost
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS. There are stories, obscured by the complacency and subterfuge of modern life, that retain the power to surprise and amaze. Some, through exploration, become chilling reminders of what we do not and cannot know about the world and, more importantly, the people around us. Three Identical Strangers has become one of the […]
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Nothing’s Impossible
Reviews MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT. Whether or not we need more missions impossible remains the subject of debate. Despite the retention of stars Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames, and the audacity to weather two decades and produce six (!) installments, the franchise exists primarily to outdo the other tent-poles with stunt sequences and gadgetry. And, […]
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Tripping
Reviews SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. I woke up thinking about this movie, which proves hard to forget. It leaves tracers behind the eyes, like staring at a too-bright neon light in a too-dark, too-late barroom, vestiges of its vibrant, driving, pointed, flawed, ugly, beautiful, street-style visual poetry. It’s appropriate for the directorial debut of Boots Riley, […]
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Skyscraper Bites
Reviews Skyscraper A show of hands then, for anyone in attendance who hasn’t seen Die Hard (1988). I’d be inclined to ask you all to leave, as it would seem we have very little to talk about. Seeing as you are the ostensible intended audience for writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s “homage,” though, I guess you ought […]