Guns fascinate me, always have. The house where I grew up contained some guns, locked away except for rare, thrilling viewings. I didn’t shoot often in my youth, but I always found it exciting, dangerous and transcendent in its contained chaos. As I’ve aged, and as my politics have become increasingly left-leaning, my interest […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
Good Will Fracking
Reviews PROMISED LAND. Without Matt Damon and Frances McDormand in the leads, Promised Land would likely have faded into obscurity already. But both are eminently watchable, and very clever at giving life to the complex inner lives of the characters they play. They’ve each done more demanding work, but McDormand in particular is on […]
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Django Gets Even
Reviews DJANGO UNCHAINED. Only people who take themselves too seriously don’t like Quentin Tarantino movies. Such people include Spike Lee, New Yorker critic David Denby, and me on Christmas. Lee has said he won’t see Django because it’s disrespectful to his ancestors, and he’s had a beef with QT from day one. Denby got on […]
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Cruisin’ and Bruisin’
Reviews JACK REACHER. The Internet has been abuzz for months with chatter about Tom Cruise taking on this role. I don’t have any previous experience with the character (drawn from a series of novels by Lee Child), but he’s apparently supposed to be some kind of hulking drifter with savant tendencies when it comes […]
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Mordor? More Like Bored-or!
Reviews THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. My paperback copy of The Hobbit, circa 1989, runs to 304 pages all told. This movie (part one of three!) clocks in at an astonishing, almost unbelievably protracted 169 minutes. Right: just shy of three hours, and we don’t even get to the dragon or the giant spiders. […]
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Wake Me When It’s Over
Reviews PLAYING FOR KEEPS is the sort of mild, inoffensive dramedy audiences can’t seem to get enough of. Filled with recognizable faces, plotted by focus groups and shot without any sense of style, it will likely make piles of money on its long, unexceptional journey to the hall of half-remembered Hollywood pabulum. Everything I look […]
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Pitt of Despair
Reviews KILLING THEM SOFTLY. With this adaptation of George V. Higgins’ novel, writer/director Andrew Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) saved my weekend. The Collection put me in a pretty dark mood (see below), but then Dominik came along and shone a light — a cynical, somber and […]
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Burning Bright
Reviews LIFE OF PI. It’s been years since I read Yann Martel’s 2001 novel, but I remember generally enjoying it, with a few reservations. And that’s more or less how I feel about director Ang Lee and writer David Magee’s adaptation. It’s bright and imaginative but loses points for its inappropriately conventional structure. The […]
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A Complex Bond
Reviews SKYFALL. The makers of the Bond franchise don’t have to reinvent the wheel. As long as they give us some ripping action scenes, sexy ladies, a few clever one-liners and a memorable villain we’ll all dutifully stream into the theater. (I suspect that allegiance to the series, rather than the depth and quality of […]
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Weekend of Bummers
FLIGHT. From a surprisingly R-rated opening (complete with day-drinking, full-frontal nudity and a dusting of cocaine), Flight moves on to one of the most intense, harrowing airplane crash sequences in movie history. Then it slows, gets contemplative and begins the gradual, irrevocable process of losing my interest. The movie has more good stuff in […]
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Split Personalities
Reviews CLOUD ATLAS. Years ago, filmmaker siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix), who can be called many things but not unambitious, decided to take a stab at adapting David Mitchell’s reputedly un-adaptable novel Cloud Atlas. They invited German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), another potentially brilliant filmmaker/iconoclast, to work on the screenplay. Together […]
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You Call That Scary?
Reviews PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4. I don’t really go in for horror movies. I can enjoy one if it’s well made, but those are pretty thin on the ground. Add to that tendency my increasingly fervent dislike of found-footage movies and you’ll have a pretty clear picture of my bias regarding any sort of Paranormal Activity. […]