film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
An indie ethos comes to the comic-book movie, upending the origin story and offering a female superhero who throws out the boys’ rule book, goes her own way, and stalks among us with easy confidence.
Ugly, garish, anachronistic like a small mean child playing with matches, and completely lacking in anything Robin Hood–y: there’s no fun, no romance, no virtue. Instead? Bizarre “aesthetics” and even worse politics.
A nightmare of nothingness, of empty, soulless wankery, that serves only to reassure male dorks that their pop-culture obsessions make them special, and will make cute girls like them.
There’s genuine fun here, but the humor is cynical, the heroics are tinged with regret, and it’s all delivered with a cold smack of — yes — political relevance.
A compelling character study of two intriguingly flawed people, the sort of richly observed drama that has gotten all but pushed out of mainstream cinema.
Simultaneously the dullest and the most insulting version of itself it could possibly be. If only it had managed to be campy, that’d be something…
An underwater heist of Nazi loot? Awesome. Submarine movies don’t get much better than this intensely suspenseful popcorn adventure.
Could be the most realistic depiction of the horribleness and the ineffectiveness of institutional incarceration that I’ve ever seen.
Turns a dark mirror on crime mythology to reflect a startling, unflattering image of America.
This electrifying Australian crime drama sears all hint of the sentimental out of a harrowing tale of one Melbourne family’s felonious downfall, and — daringly — strips all sense of cinematic romance out of a genre that often idealizes the corrupt and the brutal.
