PRESENCE. I wouldn’t want to testify to it, but I would be willing to bet Steven Soderbergh has made more movies after falsely — but probably sincerely, at the time — announcing his retirement from that very pursuit than before. Just as I can’t say exactly when he issued that dire dictum, I would not […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
Wolf Man‘s Incomplete Transformation
WOLF MAN. Almost five years ago now, the new plague looming as the presumptive worst thing that could happen in the next however-long — were we ever so innocent? — the release of writer-director Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man prompted me to both lament the rather dismal roll-out of Universal’s ostensible monster series reboot (The […]
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Shock and Irish
In a fitting end to a discomfiting year, my holidays were canceled in lieu of a protracted illness absent even the minor satisfaction of a diagnosis, or that glorious, wished-for but likely apocryphal fatigue and rest we sometimes associate with influenza. No, this was an unrelenting, tasteless sapping of strength and enthusiasm that, as it […]
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Nosferatu‘s Rebirth
NOSFERATU. Steeped as we are in vampire lore, it can be challenging to sort the origins from the iterations, source from echo. It’s possible this is because the definitive, canonical material is exceedingly limited, vivid enough in its construction — close enough to the truth? Who am I to say? — and so arrestingly simple […]
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Deliberations
CONCLAVE. Having heretofore missed (or avoided) the latest from Edward Berger, a German director I had never heard of until his remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) garnered massive critical and awards recognition, one might be inclined to pass over it all together. But then, in the spirit of the season, local […]
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Kraven Collapses, Carry-On Packs a Punch
KRAVEN THE HUNTER. Everybody makes mistakes, right? More than half the voters in this country did but that’s a topic for another conversation (screed, ugly cry, whichever one prefers). In this case, I made the optimistic error to set aside my widely disseminated opinions about Marvel movies (and yes, this is Marvel Studios, which is […]
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The Grand Escape of Emilia Peréz
EMILIA PERÉZ. Less is often more when it comes to foreknowledge. Take, for example, the precious little I knew about this film, the latest from revered French auteur Jacques Audiard. Even as far from the epicenter of the nerdosphere as I orbit, it has been difficult not to be at least somewhat aware of the […]
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Blitz Strikes its Mark
BLITZ. The screen acting of children, like their writing, can and often does transcend inexperience with immediacy and truth. Not yet calloused by influence, uninformed by professional habit or tricks or laziness, these performances lie closer to the surface than for most of their adult counterparts and can, given appropriate direction, create something realer and […]
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Anora‘s Elusive Beauty
ANORA. Occasionally, unexpectedly, a work of art — in its evocativeness and embrace of its medium — stymies critical reaction. That may be (partially) an excuse for lethargy due to other sectors of life; impending national and global crises could be a factor. But Anora is one of the most exciting, human, fully realized exercises […]
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Absolution Falls Short
On the eve of whatever is to come, I briefly struggled with the notion of dragging myself to another Robert Zemeckis experiment in “cutting-edge” technology paired with increasingly staid, conventional, didactic storytelling. In the case of Here, his latest, the conceit, as I understand it, is that the camera remains static through eons of time, […]
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An ’80s Horror Fest
Despite my whole “whatever it is,” I am not, in fact, immune to the spirit of the season. I don’t have a costume lined up, but there are voluminous bags of candy to be deployed, John Carpenter’s themes remain in heavy rotation on the turntable and I’ve been steadily making my way through a stack […]
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Woman of the Hour and the Dating Gaze
WOMAN OF THE HOUR. In the “real,” nightmare world of late 20th century America, when serial killers seemed to lurk inside every tricked-out van and basement apartment in America, there was a television show predicated on the importance of the male gaze and horrifically distorted sexual dynamics and expectations (really, it was only one of […]