
Paradise review
Diablo Cody has a new movie… but you’d hardly know it was her work, for all the bite it lacks.
film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
Diablo Cody has a new movie… but you’d hardly know it was her work, for all the bite it lacks.
Blondes can’t be surly and wisecracking? Surly wisecracking girls can’t be conventionally pretty? There are no pretty, blond geek girls? WTF?
I’ve got a piece up over at Film.com running down the top five things I’d do if I ran a movie studio. Number 1: For every $100 million-plus movie my studio produces, I take another $50 mill; I’d divide it evenly among 10 young, hungry filmmakers based on their scripts, their previous experience, and their … more…
You might have thought that Tucker Max might have taken a hint from the fact that his toddler’s temper tantrum of a flick, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, was rejected not only by critics but by audiences: it has earned only $1.4 million and never managed to muster a wider release than 266 … more…
I always knew Drew Barrymore could be this cool: her directorial debut is a simultaneously sweet and kickass story about one girl’s finding her bliss, a movie that works within Hollywood conventions of storytelling to handily demonstrate that just because a tale is familiar doesn’t mean it can’t be fresh and funny and edgy, too.
Now I get what everyone was bitching about last year with *Juno,* about how self-conscious screenwriter Diablo Cody’s dialogue was, how desperate it was to sound cool and hip even to the point of distraction.
We all know how it is. You’d like to get out to see a new movie this weekend, but you’ve been stuck on a hijacked subway train too many times to find any cinematic amusement in that scenario. But you can have something close to that blockbuster experience at home with the proper application of … more…
BUMPED UP to say that I’ve addded another movie to my schedule this week: Blood: The Last Vampire (opens in the U.S. in July, and in the U.K. on June 19; it didn’t open last week as I had indicated in an earlier post) — it’s an English-language telling of a Japanese Buffy. I didn’t … more…