John J. Bennett

Reviews BERNIE. Jack Black has finally gotten himself a role he can be proud of. Not since High Fidelity (2000), his name-maker, has he been able to sink his teeth in and showcase his triple-threat capabilities. As Bernie Tiede, a small-town Texas funeral director, his comic timing and everyman emotionality really shine. And since he […]

Reviews MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED rockets out of the gate at a seemingly unsustainable pace and manages to keep it up. Even more surprisingly, the jokes come as thick and fast as the chases, and the vast majority of them actually land. This is a sequel to a sequel to a 2005 movie with […]

Reviews SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNSTMAN. With a little luck, maybe this will be the last of the Snow White remakes. Not because it adds anything to the mythology: The 1937 Disney version is and will most likely remain the definitive movie version of the fairy tale. No, Huntsman would be an appropriate end point […]

BATTLESHIP. I put a lot of energy into trying to hate Battleship, even before the first trailer premiered. I railed against the absurdity of a board game adaptation, demanding Hollywood explain this flimsy, gratuitous attempt to capitalize on the childhoods of all Americans. Have they run out of books to adapt? Dreck to sequelize? Is […]

Reviews DARK SHADOWS. I walked into this movie with my guard down and my hopes up. Bad move. Whether it was due to my recent good fortune at the theater or my nostalgia for Tim Burton’s early movies — which I love dearly — I ignored the fact that his more recent work has consistently […]

Reviews THE AVENGERS. Judging by its $200 million opening weekend, I’m not the only one who finds The Avengers deeply satisfying. Looks like just about everybody is on the same page (save New York Times critic A.O. Scott, whose lukewarm review brought down the great vengeance and furious anger of star Sam Jackson over the […]

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT. Writer/actor Jason Segel has been collaborating with writer/director Nicholas Stoller for some time now. Often backed by Judd Apatow’s production company, they’ve achieved pretty significant financial success with their efforts. Their first major movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, was something of a breakthrough for the young filmmakers, even if I found its tone […]

Reviews MARLEY. Once, in college, a professor took our class outside on a particularly sunny day and broke us up into small groups. We were loosely assembled on the central grassy expanse of the campus. In a telling, embarrassingly typical snapshot: Frisbees flew around us, and someone had tipped speakers out of a dorm-room window, […]

Reviews AMERICAN REUNION. As we left the theater, my wife turned to me and said, “Well, that wasn’t very funny.” She’s right; there are a handful of successful jokes in the latest American Pie sequel, but the whole thing is generally flat and pointless. I was never much of a fan of this franchise. When […]

THE HUNGER GAMES. The juggernaut is upon us! Based on its gargantuan opening-weekend box office, The Hunger Games seems poised to knock the Twilight “saga” off the top of the money mountain. I’m glad because The Hunger Games is actually a good movie. Not great, but very good. The titular games serve as a kind […]

Reviews RAMPART reunites writer/director Oren Moverman and star Woody Harrelson, who collaborated on 2009’s The Messenger. This time out, Moverman enlisted crime-fiction titan James Ellroy to co-write the screenplay. I’d argue that nobody writing today has a deeper fascination with corruption and the male ego than Ellroy, so he seems like a perfect fit to […]

JOHN CARTER. With John Carter, writer-director Andrew Stanton (Wall E, Finding Nemo) hitches his wagon to Disney’s star, following Pixar counterpart Brad Bird into huge-budget live action. Bird stepped into the fourth installment of a well-established franchise, complete with mega-star (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol). Stanton adapted an early 20th century sci-fi adventure by Edgar Rice […]