
weekend watchlist: rethinking monsters (of the sea) and munchkins (aka kids)
Plus teenaged gymnasts, confused cops, and more. (First published July 29th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Plus teenaged gymnasts, confused cops, and more. (First published July 29th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Plus the horror stories women live, cold cops, and more. (First published July 2nd, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Absolutely hilarious Icelandic sendup of action buddy cop movies. Knowing, sneaky, and deliciously deadpan, upending toxic masculinity and elevating the usual subtext of the genre to the overt text.
A huge disappointment, crude and simple compared to Aardman’s earlier, more sophisticated and multilayered work. No satire or subversion, just a bog-standard triumph-of-the-underdog story.
Edgar Wright used to send up cinematic clichés with gusto and with huge humor. Here he just embraces them — and his sullen, unengaging hero — unironically.
Its humor is a little more uncomfortable than that of the other Cornetto flicks, and it’s more far satirical, in a far more cynical way, than I ever would have anticipated.
Actual unretouched phrases that people plugged into search engines this week that led them to this site (with some commentary from me):
A soulless CGI-animated remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Without a Harrison Ford to smirk and snark his way through it, natch.
“There’s no way you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork.”
What if you and your most superbly geeky bestest friend ever met an alien? I mean a real life honest-to-Carl Sagan extry terrestrial. What if? You would plotz. You would. Like Nick Frost’s Clive does here, you would giggle like a loon and then faint, out cold from the sheer splendidness of this happenstance. I know I would.