film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
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.
This is some of the finest trolling the Internet has seen to date.
Rami Malek brings warmth, humor, and a down-to-earth humanity to the larger-than-life Freddie Mercury. But it is the power of Queen’s music — the rousing good cheer, its sheer rock ’n’ roll joy — that fills up this pure brash entertainment.
Garbage. A bad excuse for a movie, even for the pulpy disposable popcorn nonsense it wants to be. Incoherent and illogical, cheap and shoddy. Wannabe sci-fi action horror that can’t pull off any of it.
Goofy, charming, faithful to its sweet source material, and all while advancing the standard “Be yourself” message with fresh challenges to gender expectations.
Whoever’s idea this was should be fired and never work in marketing again.
Charts a path to a future that refuses to get mired in nostalgia. Yet all the Star Wars notes are here, remixed into a glorious new arrangement.
A riff on the Hollywood conventions of a story we know very well already, with little new to say. James McAvoy’s mad scientist is fun to watch, though.
The 20th Century Fox screening room recently got a facelift, and is extra glam now.
20th Century Fox is embarrassed by the stars of its film The Heat; Vice thinks women writers are most beautiful when they shut up and die; the madness of George (Lucas); and more.
