film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Kudos to J.J. Abrams for doing something extraordinary: he has made me not care about Star Wars for the first time ever. I’m kind of relieved that it’s over, because it has stopped being fun.
This may be Werner Herzog’s most conventional film, but its mostly untold true story knows what it means for a woman to choose a life of adventure and intellect.
One of the most cinematically beautiful documentaries ever is a phenomenal portrait of a shamefully forgotten woman who helped shape political history.
Update! Another year, another slate of films proving there is almost nothing that men can do, think, or be that The Movies will not deem worthy of a story.
Inexcusably self-indulgent. Tarantino gratifies his enormous self-love and his amusement at his own genius at the expense of all else.
The members of the Online Film Critics Society — of which I am one — have jointly ranked the 86 movies that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
I promised to share a few of the juiciest tidbits from the Prometheus talent Q&A I attended last month. And here they are.
It’s Lawrence of Arabia with oil! And Antonio Banderas! Yum.
Depression is like an enormous rogue planet entering your solar system and ripping your world apart…
Like Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Africa is a story of time and place. Just as T.E. Lawrence’s tale could only have happened in the Middle Eastern deserts of the Great War, Isak Dinesen’s would not exist without the gorgeous vistas of East Africa of almost exactly the same time.
