film criticism by maryann johanson | celebrating 25 years: 1997–2022
Hollywood finds a way. To keep telling the same stories over and over again, that is. There’s too much going on in Fallen Kingdom, and yet somehow not enough, either. Still: dinosaurs!
Surely this is the greatest satire of the American presidency ever made for film. It’s kinda like *Being There,* but far more terrifying: instead of a wise, gentle idiot becoming president, here it’s an incurious, perpetually adolescent idiot who ascends to the highest office in the land. Surely this would be a horror story if it were true…
WHY IS THIS ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR?: Helen Mirren turns in one of the greatest performances in cinematic history as the reigning queen of England, Elizabeth II, taking a woman who not only doesn’t come across as warm and sympathetic, she doesn’t even seem human … and Mirren humanizes her, makes … more…
On the surface, you wouldnt think you could find two more disparate movies than these two…
