film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
The plastic terror of The Polar Express melded with the kooky charm of Forrest Gump is a bad, sometimes outright icky, way to tell a tale of trauma and recovery, and does a disservice to Steve Carell’s sensitive performance.
Solid, old-school man-versus-nature adventure melodrama, with a simmering green awareness; rollicking, smart, breathtaking, and sobering.
Hmm. Is there something in the zeitgeist that’s prompting movies about desolation and survival in harsh conditions?
Appears to poke, and not kindly, at how our society enables abusers of drugs and alcohol… until it stops being that interesting.
Fanciful and visually lavish, yet very grounded in human reality.
Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if Alvin asked Dave, “Am I a pet?” and then, not getting an honest answer, led a chipmunk uprising?
If anyone had asked you, a decade ago, to predict who would be the biggest star of 2010, you might have said Jim Carrey. Or Tom Hanks. Or Tom Cruise. They headlined the biggest movies of 2000, after all (respectively, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas — yes, that was the biggest movie of … more…
This past weekend in my Leftover Links roundup, I included a link to a story in The New York Times called “Branding Comes Early in Filmmaking Process,” about how product placement in studio films is now often being arranged “before the movie is cast or the script is fully shaped.” My reaction to the Times … more…
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, except you’re busy writing long, flowery letters to the love of your life, who’s on the other side of the planet somewhere where there’s no Internet access. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the … more…
‘Ahhhh! Nature! It’s all over me! Get it off!’ screams Melman the urban giraffe once he reaches the titular island in *Madagascar,* and New Yorkers will scream, too, with laughter, because we recognize ourselves in it, and everyone else will scream with laughter because they’ll think it’s making fun of our neuroses. But we like our neuroses just fine, thank you, and appreciate the tribute to them that *Madagascar* is.
