Reviews RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Virtually everyone of my age or so who goes to movies no doubt remembers the original Planet of the Apes, released in 1968. Who could forget the startling final scene when the humans discover the ruined Statue of Liberty, not to mention the over-emoting Charlton Heston whose […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
Attractive and Talented
Reviews FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS. Inevitably, and inaptly, this film will be compared to the recent No Strings Attached, a completely lame romantic comedy despite the presence of Natalie Portman and perhaps partly because of the presence of Ashton Kutcher. Friends with Benefits is in a different league. For one thing, it has a savvy script […]
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Hammer Time
Reviews THOR. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood these days would seem to signal the impending doom of the screenwriter. More and more, big studio movies scrape together stories from old material. Remakes abound, as do usually pallid resurrections of old comic book characters. Maybe it speeds up the development process, or maybe good scripts are […]
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Winning!
WIN WIN. Regular moviegoers know not to trust trailers. In addition to regularly including plot spoilers and often, especially for comedies, revealing the film’s best lines, trailers can be significantly misleading. Such is the case with Win Win. From the trailer I saw too many times, I would have put this film down as a […]
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Fourth Time, No Charm
Reviews SCRE4M. You might ask, when confronted with another Scream sequel, all these years later, what’s left to say? What new, original take on the formula could there possibly be? Is there a motive beyond profit for producing such a movie? You would be right to ask these questions, to which the answers are: nothing, none, […]
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Revenge Served Cold: Best
Reviews HANNA. Consummately played by Saoirse Ronan, Hanna is being homeschooled with a vengeance; perhaps for vengeance would be more accurate. In a finely shot opening sequence, we watch Hanna stalk a deer in the snow with a bow and arrow. She shoots the deer but not immediately fatally and must run after it. As […]
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A Reliable Source
Reviews SOURCE CODE. As in his debut, Moon, *Source Code* finds director Duncan Jones (aka Zowie Bowie, son of rock star David Bowie) working within a sort of deconstructed genre framework, then allowing his protagonist to become the prime mover, thereby humanizing what could easily become a boilerplate popcorn movie. In this case, US Army […]
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Boring Aliens, Momish Aliens
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. I would not recommend Battle: Los Angeles to anyone. Not that it’s especially unlikable or hard to watch, there just isn’t really anything to hold a viewer’s attention for more than a few minutes. Hard-bitten, battle-scarred Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is but days away from retirement when duty calls, […]
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Stay Home and Adjust Yourself
Reviews:TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT. Essentially another retelling of the “last big party of the season” teen flick, Take Me Home Tonight centers on Matt Franklin (Topher Grace), a nerdy high-school outcast/math genius/recent M.I.T graduate in the summer following commencement. Having taken a job slinging VHS tapes at the mall, he’s foundering, without any notion of […]
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Farrelly Well
By John J. Bennett Previews: HALL PASS. This one came in completely under my radar. I hadn’t seen a trailer or cast list, and didn’t find out it was a Farrelly brothers (Dumb and Dumber) picture until the opening credits. I had heard vague rumblings it was a sex comedy about a husband’s reprieve from […]
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Nine Bucks on Secretariat
Previews RED. Based on a DC graphic novel about a former black-ops CIA agent marked for assassination, this shoot-’em-up stars Bruce Willis as Frank Moses, a “retired, extremely dangerous” spy who reassembles his old crew (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren) to fight the power. Directed by Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife). 111 […]
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Stone, Cold
Previews THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Since almost everybody’s on Facebook now, a movie about the guy who got it going seemed inevitable. Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) knows how to create tension; Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War) seems more in tune with liberal politics. Usually likeable […]