film criticism by maryann johanson | celebrating 25 years: 1997–2022
The deep, honest emotion undercutting the performative toxic masculinity of these young men is beyond charming and vitally essential, but the melodramatic randomness of the plot ultimately lost me.
And we have winners!
An updated The Canterbury Tales for the 21st century, an on-the-road movie for our existentially confused times…
WHY IS THIS ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR?: Emilio Estevez makes an enormous leap as a filmmaker, nay, as an artist, with this powerfully emotional tribute to the influence of Bobby Kennedy… and at the same time laments the absence today of his like in the public realm. As an American who … more…
Kinda cheap-looking and with a quasi-indie, ‘who gives a shit if we ever make any money’ attitude that Miramax and The Blair Witch Project have all but wiped from the face of studio filmmaking, 1984’s Repo Man reminds us that once, not so long ago, weird-ass movies were not verboten in Hollywood. Deadpan humor, throwaway visual jokes, and oblique political and social satire may have doomed this way-cool flick to the neverland of sci-fi cultdom, but it has good company there, like its similarly themed contemporaries The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and the TV series Max Headroom.
