Reviews INHERENT VICE. Writer/director — we could probably use “auteur” here without irony or too much embarrassment — Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my big three. After Tarantino broke my head open with his exuberant crime pastiche, P.T. Anderson and Wes Anderson (no relation) shepherded me back to a more reasonable place. Each is […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
The Gambler’s Longshot
Reviews THE GAMBLER. Popular opinion holds that The Gambler, a remake of a 40-year-old James Caan vehicle with the same title, is Wahlberg’s all-in (pardon the pun, I can’t promise it’ll be the last) bet on Oscar gold. On paper it looks like a ballsy, odds-against bet (see?). In the plus column, there’s a tuned-up […]
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Journey’s End
Reviews WILD. I had to get over a few things in order to give Wild a fair shake: mostly my frustration at a protagonist defined largely by self-involvement and hubris and my inherent cynicism about what would appear to be an A-list actor’s vanity project/attempt at another Oscar nomination. Reese Witherspoon, who plays Cheryl Strayed […]
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Promised Lands
Reviews THE HOMESMAN. Conventional Westerns are scarce enough these days, but a bleakly comedic road movie with a female protagonist is unique. In the Nebraska Territory sometime before the Civil War, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) has managed to build and maintain a successful farm and homestead without the aid of a husband. Despite her […]
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Streaming
Our local cinematic landscape can seem desolate, unsustainable. This is due in no small part to the entropy and transnational profit grubbing that have displaced art and showmanship in mainstream American movie making. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the ratio of interesting, inventive movies to the rest of them seems […]
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Starved for Action
Reviews THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1. As cold as last year’s Catching Fire left me, of course I thought I’d enjoy this more. But as a heretofore-unrecognized wellspring of misplaced optimism, I was caught off guard. Mockingjay – Part 1 seemed like it would at least be exciting and grand, even if I […]
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The Birdman Cometh
Reviews BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). I’ve been an admirer, if a casual, distanced one, of director Alejandro González Iñárritu since his feature debut, Amores Perros (2000). His visual style and penchant for visceral, multi-arced storytelling are undeniable. Much of his work though, heady and heavy as it is, lacks the humor and […]
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Space Age
Reviews BIG HERO 6. If the movie were more captivating, with a story that rose occasionally above boiler-plate predictability, I might not have been so distracted by the 2-year-old tirelessly running and screaming in the front row. But Big Hero 6 wasn’t enough. In nearish-future San Fransokyo — a thinly veiled San Francisco where everybody […]
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Creep
Reviews NIGHTCRAWLER introduces the viewer to the world of independent Los Angeles news stringers: freelance cameramen with police scanners who prowl the darkened landscape in search of others’ misfortune. They live and die by the motto “if it bleeds, it leads.” There are, of course, overtones of indictment at work in Nightcrawler, both of the […]
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Skeleton Crews
Reviews THE BOOK OF LIFE. Guillermo del Toro as executive producer, a talented cast and a unique visual style had me convinced that this could be more than just another animated feature. Even if del Toro’s trademark darkness and gravity aren’t fully present in The Book of Life, his insistence on visual invention and his […]
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Awkward Reunions
Reviews THE SKELETON TWINS. I don’t bear heartfelt indie dramedies any ill will, but they rarely suit my taste. Maybe I’ve been made callous by decades of broad Hollywood entertainments and hardboiled crime fiction. Whatever the reason, there’s some bridge-building to be done in order for me to connect with a movie like The Skeleton […]
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The Lady Astonishes
Reviews GONE GIRL is one of the best-made movies this year. Its screenplay (which Gillian Flynn adapted from her own juggernaut novel) remains taut, and concise over two and half hours. The convincingly drawn characters are fully realized by a top-notch cast. David Fincher’s (Se7en, The Social Network) direction creates a tense, mesmerizing atmosphere, thanks […]