handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
I feel like I’m flogging a dead horse keeping up with Dream Cast, but I’m willing to give it a few more weeks to prove itself either vital or a goner. This week: Magnum, P.I., the 1980-88 CBS action detective series starring Tom Selleck as a former Navy SEAL and Vietnam vet now working as … more…
This is a ridiculously entertaining night at the movies.
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… Woo-hoo! Illuminati! Conspiracy theories! Evil religions! Tom Hanks snarking at priests! Ewan McGregor in a clerical collar! Well, actually, that last doesn’t do much for me, but I know someone who’s going to be very intrigued by that. Man, if church had been this exciting, I might … more…
This is probably the best two-hour, 2009 version of that six-hour, 2003 British TV miniseries possible.
Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… This is gonna be an interesting test for me. The American remake and truncation of the British miniseries of the same name looks rather intriguing from the trailer. Certainly, I’m a big fan of Russell Crowe, always love the intensity he brings to a role. I’m … more…
Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… It’s a terrorism romance starring Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams, pulling an English accent. Incendiary opens in the U.K. on October 24; no U.S. release date has been announced.
Zellweger brings a flinty steel to Potter, a woman with the faraway imagination of an overgrown child who simultaneously has the enormous backbone…
Welcome to *THX 11-Michael Bay*! It’s not a science fiction movie, but an incredible simulation!
BEST ACTOR Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda It’s a role that, in the hands of even another very competent actor, could have descended into pathos and sentimentality, but Cheadle’s performance goes way beyond mere competence: As an Oskar Schindler-type figure in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, he approaches incomprehensible horrors in a way that makes us intimate partners … more…
Honestly, I’d pay cash money to see either Neeson or Ewan McGregor on his own read from the phone book, and the two of them together is almost too delicious to bear. His Obi-Wan unfortunately doesn’t have an awful lot to do, but McGregor wastes no opportunity to be brilliant, reigning in a young man’s impetuousness with a Jedi-in-training’s emotional control — that these two opposing forces are at war within him is clear throughout the film.
