film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Rosamund Pike is perfection in this intellectual romance, an unsentimental portrait of a woman striving to be appreciated for her mind at a time even more anti-woman than today. Feminist and flinty.
An old-fashioned kiddie adventure, sweetly earnest, equal parts scary, funny, exciting, sad, and happy, with only a bit of uncanny valley in its CGI doggo star. Definitely had something in my eye.
An electrifying style lights up this geek adventure of the intersections between science, culture, and capitalism in the 19th-century battle to power our world. Cumberbatch and Shannon are brilliant.
This infuriatingly reductive biopic of the Hobbit author renders him as stolid and dull, and removes all the mystery and the wonder from creative inspiration. Literal-minded and free of magic.
Writer, director, and star Rupert Everett’s labor of cinematic love, about the last years of Oscar Wilde, is a small wonder of contradictions: nightmarish yet sanguine, a bit sordid yet full of grace.
Sure, millions of Native people dead and ancient cultures destroyed, but who has to live with that? All the good soldiers who were just following orders, that’s who. Won’t someone think of the white man?
Charming based-on-fact British costume dramedy gently snarks about power and propriety but cuts a lot deeper when it comes to bigotry and bootlicking.
This may be Werner Herzog’s most conventional film, but its mostly untold true story knows what it means for a woman to choose a life of adventure and intellect.
Filtering other people’s stories through the eyes of white men is tedious and offensive, and it feels like a desperate hedge against fresh perspectives.
Welcome to the costume-drama equivalent of Project X, celebrating misogyny and male sociopathy as just the way things are, and what else can ya expect from the world?
