Reviews CHEF. I will say, with no reservations (sorry), that I enjoyed this more than any movie this year. There’ve been bolder statements, as 2014 hasn’t exactly been a banner year so far. But for me, Chef lives in the rarefied air of legitimately great mainstream American cinema. It’s not a crazy tone poem, an […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
Legendary Letdowns
Reviews A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST. Writer/director/actor/producer/song-and-dance man Seth MacFarlane, after winning at primetime cartoons, had a surprise hit with his movie debut Ted (2012). This put him in the rare and enviable position of doing whatever he wanted for his sophomore effort, with very little oversight from his studio bosses. Therein […]
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Flashbacks
Reviews X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. As a fledging geek dipping a toe in the ocean of comics, the X-Men were too much for me. Ditto the whole Marvel Universe, but the X-Men in particular were so many, each with his or her own convoluted origin story, all entangled in myriad plotlines across an incomprehensibly […]
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Overseas Visitors
Reviews GODZILLA. I don’t dislike monster movies, nor do I seek them out. So I met the news of (yet another) Godzilla with casual disinterest. But then I saw the teaser trailer. It’s a marvel of editing: striking, evocative images, David Strathairn’s booming monologue, all set to a ghostly chorale. And at the end, just […]
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Not Fade Away
Reviews FADING GIGOLO. As an actor, John Turturro is possessed with a kind of vibratory, coiled-spring nervousness that makes his most memorable performances indelible and uniquely his. The Coen brothers have a particular talent for drawing out his unease, and some of the characters he has played for them are, as a result, immortal. I’m […]
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Vengeance is Meh
Reviews THE OTHER WOMAN. Imagine, if you will: Some would-be marketing whiz gets a wild hair, has the Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary) mash-up Sex and the City with every cheating husband comedy every made, making double-sure not to spare the laxative and hair remover jokes in the second act. Then, […]
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Afterlife
Reviews HEAVEN IS FOR REAL. So it’s right out there in the clumsily worded title. Although the premise of the movie — that a 4-year-old visited heaven, sat on the lap of the Christ and met the sister he never knew he had because she died in utero — includes a crisis of faith, ultimately […]
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Touchdown
Reviews DRAFT DAY. I don’t particularly care for or about the National Football League. And over the years, I’ve come to view professional athletic organizations and their sanctioning bodies with an ever more jaundiced eye. Recently, in the middle of some cavernous, anonymous, Midwestern chain restaurant, lamenting my lot, I realized that the many giant […]
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Role Models
Reviews BAD WORDS. Since his resurgence on TV’s Arrested Development (a handful of hilarious movie cameos notwithstanding), Jason Bateman has been remade as a sort of put-upon everyman/icon. With Ben Stiller becoming a victim of his own newfound sincerity, Bateman the new face face of frustrated good intentions, the likeable loser destined to catch a […]
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Self Sabotage
Reviews SABOTAGE. I greet new David Ayer movies with probably inappropriate enthusiasm. Like it or not, he has made a career out of stories in which those who’ve sworn to serve and to protect occasionally serve themselves first. I return to his criminally under-acknowledged End of Watch (2012) several times a year, and it makes […]
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Divergent Conforms
Reviews DIVERGENT. The need for yet another dystopian near-future, teen-centric melodrama is dubious at best. Not only has the theme been covered exhaustively in recent years, but it reeks of millennial pandering and uninspired adaptation. It’s as if studios that missed the brass ring, failing to acquire the rights to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games juggernaut, […]
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The Fast and the Short
Reviews THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2014: LIVE ACTION. It is a happy thing, tinged with sadness, to have the opportunity to see these shorts in a theatrical setting. Anybody who makes movies cut their teeth on short-form experiments; they represent imagination directly expressed, unburdened by the need for three-act story structure or overarching character […]