FACT CHECK: “The Fall Guy” Failed to Become a Blockbuster. Can It Succeed as a Sleeper Hit?

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @bcfonfilm

Judging by the social media meltdown over May’s weak box office, you’d think some moviegoers had never heard of a flop. No one expects logic from Film Twitter, but cries that “The Fall Guy,” “IF,” and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” herald The End of Moviegoing As We Know It have been particularly histrionic.

“FURIOSA” REVIEW: Mythic Form Competes With Cinematic Function in George Miller’s Latest Mad Max Saga

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @bcfonfilm

There is a moment in George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” when a dog with a prosthetic leg lumbers onto the screen. At first, the sight is pitiable—who hurt this poor creature?—but that’s before you spy what Miller’s roving fur baby has in its mouth: a human limb.

REP CITY: A Mystery James Bond Double Feature Is Coming to the Hollywood Theatre

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @bcfonfilm

Each month, BCF selects a repertory screening in Portland worth seeking out.

What’s with the secrecy surrounding the Hollywood Theatre’s mystery James Bond double feature on May 26? Is it all in the name of cinematic mischief? Or is the theater afraid to admit that they’re bringing back Pierce Brosnan’s glacier-surfing antics in “Die Another Day”? (Kidding! Although I’m now regretting putting the possibility out into the universe.)

THE WEEK IN MOVIES: Nature’s Wrath, Absent Auteur, Coppola Chaos, Fallen Guys, Spider-Hair

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @bcfonfilm

Each month, BCF reviews selected films he’s watched, both in theaters and at home.

“Evil Does Not Exist,” directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”), could have been a righteous saga of environmentalists defending their isolated home. And it is…until a bizarro sequence that reminds us that nature is as ruthless as it is wondrous. Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani are movingly earnest as misguided urbanites championing a glamping site in a rural community, but the film’s center of gravity is Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), the “odd job guy” who teaches the interlopers a brutal truth: Earth is not ours to exploit or to protect. Now playing at Cinema 21.

Bennett Campbell Ferguson’s Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2023

TRAUMA TALES

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Just as Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” buoyed me during quarantine, his “Oppenheimer” (1) became one of my lifelines during another harrowing year. I needed “Oppenheimer”—its earth-and-sky scope, its ruthless “I believe we did” honesty, its wounded but enduring romanticism. “Kitty and I, we’re grownups,” J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) says of his wife, Katherine (Emily Blunt). “We’ve walked through fire together.” I have loved Mr. Nolan’s films since before I was a grownup, and they’re still guiding me through the fire.

Why “Lost in Translation” Is My Favorite Film of All Time

THERE’S NOTHING MORE THAN THIS

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

It’s nighttime in Tokyo. In the back of a car, a man awakens and beholds the city around him—a glorious vortex of sleek surfaces and gleaming lights. But by the time he reaches his hotel, the power of the future-shock architecture is overshadowed by a message from his wife: “You forgot Adam’s birthday. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

BREAKING NEWS: Dwayne Johnson Apologizes to Vin Diesel For “Shameful Disrespect”; Says He Will Return For “Fast & Furious 10”

LITTLE BROTHER DWAYNE COMES HOME

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Today, Dwayne Johnson formally apologized to his “Fast & Furious” co-star Vin Diesel on Instagram, stating that he regretted initially refusing to appear in the tenth “Fast & Furious” film.

Bennett Campbell Ferguson’s Top 14 Films of 2021

REMINDERS OF WHAT A FREE MIND CAN DO

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

From the opening shot of a silhouette rising before a window to the final scene of a young woman driving a crimson car toward an uncertain-yet-hopeful future, every moment of “Drive My Car” (1) is a gift. To its director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, I say: ありがとうございます.

“The Matrix Resurrections” (2) is an act of faith—in cinema, humanity, and most of all, the liberating power of love. In an age of anguish, director Lana Wachowski let us soar to the heavens with Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), offering radical cinematic comfort even as she challenged what we thought we knew about the Matrix and our relationship to it.

Film Review: “The Matrix Resurrections” (Lana Wachowski, 2021)

THE PASSION OF NEO (AND LANA)

by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Near the beginning of “The Matrix Resurrections,” a character muses, “After all these years…to be going back to where it all started…back to the Matrix.” It’s a line that may speak to moviegoers leery of returning the world of “The Matrix,” a 1999 sci-fi masterpiece that probed the mind and bedazzled the eye, but also gave rise to two excruciating sequels.