
The Dressmaker movie review: haute couture as a tragicomic weapon
So entertaining, so unexpected, so wonderfully oddball, so damn good. Witty genre-busting simmering with pathos, humor, and calamity.
handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
So entertaining, so unexpected, so wonderfully oddball, so damn good. Witty genre-busting simmering with pathos, humor, and calamity.
One of the smartest and most enthralling SF film series ever breaks more new ground as it ends on notes as emotional and provocative as they are explosive.
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The only slightly original element of the first film — the Maze — is gone, and now we’re in not simply a generic afterscape but every sci-fi afterscape.
Ridiculously romantic in all the best ways, and more modern, more progressive, and even just plain more grownup that half the movies thrown at us today.
Sneakily undercuts tropes of the young-adult hero’s journey. But in a more adventurous movie environment, this wouldn’t feel this fresh as it does.
One of the best SF series ever deepens its critique of the power of propaganda in ways complicated, intriguingly contradictory, and a little bit horrifying.
Bland and generic beyond the small pleasures of its theme-park-ride-esque thrills and its half-intriguing, half-infuriating mystery.
Hauntingly grim, full of appalling ironies and awful truths. This is most definitely not the feel-good movie of the summer.
No, it’s not wildly different than other science fiction, hero’s journey, and adventure movies. Sometimes we call such stories archetypal. Mythic, even.