film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Grim, mysterious, and unsettling, never more so than when it is quiet and still. But a brutality lurks below its calm, slick surface. Oscar Isaac’s performance is a work of astonishing minimalism.
A cautionary tale about getting mired in the past is itself hamstrung by what has come before: overplayed noir tropes and underbaked sci-fi ideas. The fab cast at least elevates this to the mediocre.
Ridiculous excuse for a thriller — obvious, preposterous, ultimately banal — piles on psychological absurdities as it builds from a maddening middle to an enraging crescendo of misogynist nonsense.
As credulous — or con-artist cheaty — as its demon-hunter protagonists, but lacking their charm. Worse, it can’t even be bothered to justify and satisfy the procedural approach to its mystery.
I don’t see how the astonishing “Opera,” by Erick Oh, doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Animated Short. This is a stupendous achievement, a cartoon clockwork depicting life, the universe, and everything.
Nonsensical Danish thriller concocts absurd connections between the nature of evil and *checks notes* office politics among shallow clichés of women. Preposterously, this is not meant to be satire.
A beautiful-ugly film, a work of domestic gothic grotesquerie, of women’s suffocation and sacrifice, pain and isolation. Elisabeth Moss’s performance is next-level glorious in its wackadoo intensity.
Striking sci-fi mood piece, all eeriness and ookiness, wonder and dread. Explicitly Twilight Zone–esque, summoning a midcentury-America innocence in order to shatter its narrowness (and our own).
The hugely appealing Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani share terrific comic and romantic chemistry and work their everywoman and -man charm to the max. Go-to goofy escapism for, say, a pandemic lockdown.
Nothing works in this ludicrous thriller, which fails to compel us with its roster of monstrous characters. Lily Collins is woefully miscast; Patrick Warburton and Simon Pegg are criminally wasted.
