film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Asghar Farhadi attempts to meld melodramatic mystery with his usual humanistic drama, but leaves little space for either impulse to be satisfied. Disappointing and strangely anticlimactic.
The Shape of Water wins Best Film, and Best Director goes to Guillermo del Toro. Agnes Varda is Defying Age and Ageism, and Hollywood’s sexual tormentors are inducted in the AWFJ Hall of Shame.
Darren Aronofsky’s self-pitying cinematic rending of garments is repulsive, transparent, and pointless. A grotesquely wrapped gift box of utter banality.
The franchise finally overstays its welcome with this cacophony of CGI spectacle, a contrived and confusing plot, and a newly cruel and stupid Jack Sparrow.
A tired old piece of action junk that expects us to sympathize with a very bad man. We don’t.
Almost, but not quite, hilariously demented — if accidentally so — drama about sex and death, and why not to get involved with drug cartels.
And Javier Bardem and Idris Elba and Ryan Gosling. (And also Channing Tatum, if you’re into that sort of thing.) From “Love You Forever: 5 of Hollywood’s Sexiest Men Read to You from Children’s Classics” at Bookriot: You know what they say: There is nothing sexier than a man reading a children’s book. Okay, so … more…
Oh, goody. Terrence Malick has another film about running in fields at the golden hour.
This is the sneaky cleverness of Skyfall: it is, at last, going to tell us why Bond still matters. It is not going to make it easy on itself, though, nosiree.
Supply the plot, too, if you like. Or just tease us with a title that makes us salivate just imagining what it could be about…
