film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
An intriguing story with engaging performances about a compelling real-life character, but oddly inert, and can’t quite make all its many aspects gel into a wholly satisfying or wholly coherent story.
Pointless adaptation of the beloved children’s novel soaked in a gothic spookiness that seems to deliberately misunderstand the story. Neither literal enough nor magical enough. My heart was unmoved.
How very kind of Tom Hanks to lend his gravitas and inescapable likability to a bunch of WWII naval reenactors on their weekend-getaway “crossing the north Atlantic in 1942 dodging U-boats” campaign.
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.
Reed Morano directs The Rhythm Section, starring Blake Lively; more… [This post is for Patreon patrons only for the first month.]
An untold Holocaust story, of Philippine president Manuel Quezon’s fight to take in Jewish refugees, feels like it remains untold: this sluggish, overlong film cannot overcome its low-budget roots.
Holly Gent cowrites mystery dramedy Where’d You Go, Bernadette, starring Cate Blanchett; more… [This post is for Patreon patrons only for the first month.]
Post WWII upheaval is a cheap backdrop to beautiful people getting it on. Characters and situations are undeveloped, and there’s little genuine romance here, and too much laughable preposterousness.
This Nazis-with-supernatural-weapons horror schlock drags its feet getting to its fantastical elements and then does absolutely nothing interesting with them, just wallows in dull, rote gore and grue.
A glorious gothic conundrum of obsession, delusion, psychological infection, and just possibly actual malevolent spirits. The most haunting aspect of this eerily enrapturing film may be the sly, maddening ambiguity of it all.
