THE ROYAL HOTEL. I was momentarily at a loss, Killers of the Flower Moon having left a rightful vacuum, both in terms of theatrical releases (who wants to follow that?) and my desire to go see them. This was compounded by a sense of having missed out on scary movie season. And so I cast […]
John J. Bennett
Posted inArts + Scene
The Evil that White Men Do
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. In a recent profile for the Los Angeles Times, Marissa R. Moss refers to “the radical empathy” of Jason Isbell, the frequently mis-described artist whose albums have spent more time on the turntable in this house than any other’s in the last decade. Not coincidentally, Isbell has a small but […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Good Luck, Ladies
In my (lately frequent) absences, the Editor seems compelled to see and write almost exclusively about horror. I suspect the impetus for this is actually two-fold. Despite frequent, vociferous protestations, the Editor is actually an ardent fan of the genre. But these occasions allow her even more opportunity than the normal, strictly enforced, brigade-style hierarchy […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Character Star
REPTILE. There are character actors and there are movie stars, and in between is Benicio Del Toro. Like many, I first became fully aware of Del Toro with The Usual Suspects (1995), written by the now-anointed Christopher McQuarrie and directed by the lately canceled Hollywood monster Bryan Singer. Standing out among a cast of standouts, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Intelligence
DUMB MONEY. The big lie or the truth-at-large that remains largely unspoken, is that the stock market is any kind of democratic capitalist enterprise. By the logic of a casino, perhaps: Anyone with money to waste is welcome to come on in; be our guest. Rule No. 1 of the casino being that the house […]
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Gran Turismo’s Sponsored Race
GRAN TURISMO. How does one approach a project such as this one, for all intents and purposes a feature length advertisement for the Gran Turismo game (sorry, simulator) franchise, Playstation/Sony and Nissan, without the cynicism immediately engendered by such shilling? With great difficulty and trepidation, would be my answer. On the other side of the […]
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Rabbit Holes and Shaggy Dogs
THE YOUTUBE EFFECT. As a Luddite, my contact with YouTube is infrequent, shallow and glancing: the occasional how-to, stand-up specials, squinty-eyed late-night music video ping-pong sessions, that’s about it. Living as I do in the allegory of the cave, though, I have at least some sense of how central the site is to many (most?) […]
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Bigger Sharks to Jump
THE MEG 2: THE TRENCH. Whether because or in spite of its unrepentant silliness (stupidity?), I found a lot to like about The Meg (2018). Jason Statham plying his acerbic brand of ass-kickery against a gigantic dinosaur shark? Yes, please, and some more, if there’s any. Thing is, I kind of thought I was more […]
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Bombs and Bombshells
OPPENHEIMER. It comes as no surprise that Christopher Nolan’s latest magnum opus should be heralded for its audacity and scale. He being a holdover from another time, if such a time even existed; all of his opuses are magnums. Seemingly to demonstrate this, or to prove that even the great director is susceptible to hubris, […]
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Making it Possible
What I couldn’t have articulated then, and perhaps cannot now, was director Brian De Palma’s critical role as both arbiter and synthesist of cinema cool, even as his career was approaching an inevitable cooling-off point and he his 60th birthday. De Palma wouldn’t become a touchstone for me until years later, incapable as I was […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Joy of the Ride
JOY RIDE. It has been rather widely reported — but may still be apocryphal — that at some point during the development of this screenplay, the writers (Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao) thought to call it The Joy Fuck Club. Clearly, that title is a bit too outré for our provincial American sensibilities, but I […]
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Maintaining a Legacy
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Time may eventually allow us to more properly contextualize the great Dr. Jones. Younger generations may have already done it, distanced as they presumably are from the visceral, world-making experience of meeting Harrison Ford’s irascible, iron-tough, impossibly cool archeologist at an age when that introduction was as formative, […]