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FlickFilosopher.com

film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997

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Anthony Mackie

Synchronic movie review: Benson and Moorhead would have voted for Obama twice if they could have…

Fri, Apr 09, 2021
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Just because a tale is science fiction doesn’t mean that plausibility and cohesion are not required. Yet we can see the narrative strings pulling along the puppet-characters, and in an ugly direction.

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Seberg movie review: inept tribute to a troubled movie star

Wed, Feb 19, 2020
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French New Wave icon Jean Seberg plays an unwitting game of cat-and-mouse with the FBI in a strangled blend of biopic and paranoid thriller. Not even always fascinating Kristen Stewart can save this.

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Detroit movie review: racism 101 for white people

Thu, Aug 31, 2017
29 comments

Tense, gripping, enraging, but only about things that black Americans already know. This is a primer about racism for white people, and we must pay attention.

| 29 Comments

Captain America: Civil War movie review: the consequences of superpowers

Fri, Apr 29, 2016
39 comments

Tough, unanswerable human questions frame spectacular, innovative action sequences that are like superhero ballets. This series just keeps getting better.

| 39 Comments

Triple 9 movie review: ordinary criminals

Thu, Feb 18, 2016
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How did a genre-smashing director make a heist thriller so generic, with characters too unlikable to be engaging but not twisted enough to be intriguing?

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The Night Before movie review: twas the bromance before Christmas

Wed, Dec 09, 2015
1 comment

It’s bogged down by too many derailing tangents, but the three appealing leads have a wonderful chemistry, and it gets close to the spirit of the season.

| 1 Comment

Christmas with the Coopers (aka Love the Coopers) movie review: familial torture

Wed, Dec 02, 2015
3 comments

Glossy Hollywood automatons sleepwalk through family dynamics full of forced quirkiness, excruciating cuteness, and phony emotion. Absolutely cringeworthy.

| 3 Comments

Captain America: The Winter Soldier review: politics in our peanut butter

Mon, Mar 24, 2014
55 comments

Stuns me with its scathing commentary on the real world today, wrapped up in what is some of the most delicious, most comic-booky fantasy ever.

| 55 Comments

Runner Runner review: yawner yawner

Thu, Sep 26, 2013
4 comments

Dull and perfunctory, this is a crime thriller that sets itself up as a revenge story but can’t manage to drum up any excitement or suspense, and precious little revenge, either.

| 4 Comments

in praise of Rebel Wilson, and how she messes with Michael Bay’s puny mind in Pain and Gain

Wed, Sep 04, 2013
2 comments

It’s almost as if, by virtue of her fatness, Wilson is, in Bay’s mind, removed from the realm of “woman as sex-toy object” and placed back into the realm of woman-as-human-being.

| 2 Comments
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