film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
You could almost call it, *Where Do Dreams Go to Die?,* this satire that’s so insightful about art and hope and ambition and enthusiasm — and their flip sides of anger and frustration and embarrassment and derailment — that it’s actually painful at times.
Sex Bomb You’ve heard the term sex bomb. Now hear this: The House Bunny is a nuclear sex bomb, a radioactive weapon deadly to all forms of life except cockroaches and — maybe — morons as catastrophically stupid as the Playboy bunny Anna Faris “portrays” here. Oh, it’s supposed to be adorable, how stupid Faris’s … more…
Woodyn’t You Know It My relationship with Woody Allen, which has been love/hate of late — emphasis on the hate — is taking an uptick. His last few films — Scoop, Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream — couldn’t hold a light to, say, Manhattan, but at least they didn’t make me want to claw my eyes … more…
My eyes are still burning from this painfully misbegotten attempt to… I don’t know what. Bring back the horrible racial, cultural, and gender stereotypes of the 1960s? Creep out audiences with a depiction of weirdly, disturbingly human-ish flies the likes of which we haven’t seen since the tiny head of that mad scientist squeeked out … more…
Oh please please please let it be true that Ben Stiller is done with the humiliation ‘comedies’ and is getting back to his roots in smart satire.
Here’s yet another excellent argument for the legalization of marijuana: it will prevent us seeing more movies like this one.
Even with bar set low and my unconditional love set high, I cannot freakin’ believe how cruelly ‘Tomb’ rips out my geeky little heart and stomps on it.
I walked out of *Meet Dave*…
It’s not enough, these days, if you want to make a stupid, crass, juvenile movie, to merely be stupid, crass, and juvenile: Everyone’s doing that, and a filmmaker makes to distinguish himself, right? So here we have the next step — actually several giant next steps — in taking movies to levels so new and so base that they stand apart…
