film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
A vicious, delicious Hollywood sendup, deconstructing — like a wrecking ball deconstructs — indie filmmaking, cinematic violence, and the industry’s treatment of women. Write what you know? Hoo boy.
A work of breathtaking audacity. This is as perilous as comedy gets, and it’s very, very funny, often shockingly so. Sacha Baron Cohen’s scathing cultural strikes land like extinction-level asteroids.
This Apollo-era would-be suspense-thriller mockumentary is more an exercise in “look how film-school cool and clever we are” than anything else.
An absolutely hilarious mockumentary combination of utter silliness, social satire, pop-culture cramdown, and heartfelt pathos. And vampires.
This too gentle mockumentary barely even takes aim at its easiest potential targets, but the appealing cast is game and manages a few cogent hits.
Dryly humorous and wonderfully weird, this is a preternaturally mundane evocation of early 80s nerdery and an almost scary peek at the history of AI.
Such a simple little movie…but also sad and strange, and ironic and discomfiting.
You must see Twenty Twelve if you’re a fan of smart, sharp social, cultural, media, and political satire and hugely entertaining comedic performances from some of the best British talent doing funny stuff today.
First-time feature filmmakers director Edward Boase and screenwriter James Walker want you know right off the bat that Blooded is not a “mockumentary.” But it is a fictional story told in an expansive documentary format — complete with “reenactments” of “real” events — that lends a powerful urgency and immediacy and relevance to an invented story in a way that a more narrative structure would have missed.
Real or put-on, this is a disaster, a bratty, self-indulgent demand to be paid attention to, complete with the expectation that it will be paid attention to, because celebrity simply really is that irresistible no matter what it’s doing…
