film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
This true origin story of a literal social-justice warrior is earnest, passionate… and exhausting. We need to keep telling these stories, yet each is but another tiny drop of water in a rough ocean.
Our most honored films are Roma (five awards), The Favourite (four awards), and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (three awards).
Roma wins four awards including Best Picture; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is Best Animated Feature.
Can’t quite manage to continue the first film’s smart, unsentimental examination of male emotion and men’s relationships. At best achieves a draw with a genre path that is already extremely well worn.
Classic comic-book stuff made fresh by drawing on underexplored mythologies and cultures, yet still deeply resonant and deeply universal. An exhilarating pulp-fiction dream that ups the ante on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Mad Max: Fury Road gets a lot of love…
Feels natural and organic, not forced by the dictates of movie franchises. A smart, engaging, unsentimental portrait of male friendship and male emotion.
There isn’t an authentic human motivation or emotion to be found here. The bar has been raised too high on comic-book movies for us to accept junk like this.
This is like the Mirror Universe, evil-goatee-wearing flip side of Don Jon, a pile of obnoxious, grossout junk.
The superhero origin story we have become so very familiar with in its purest form, stripped of all the pulp and all the camp that has accreted around the genre.
