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FlickFilosopher.com

film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997

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Michael Bay

Ambulance movie review: dead on arrival

Fri, Apr 01, 2022
3 comments

A screaming deluge of metal and rubber devoid of drama, suspense, and elegance. Instead it’s random vehicular chaos enacted with the same energy of a four-year-old smashing his toys into one another.

| 3 Comments

Bloodshot movie review: bloodshit

Thu, Mar 26, 2020
no comments yet

Incoherent action sequences and strained sci-fi woo-woo can’t save a clueless mashup of Robocop, The Matrix, and Captain America that makes a mockery of its protagonist. Deeply terrible.

| Leave a comment

The Rescue movie review: China’s Coast Guard at action-thriller work

Fri, Jan 24, 2020
no comments yet

This Michael Bay–esque love letter to China Rescue & Salvage may be propaganda, but its enjoyably bonkers melodrama and grippingly engaging action are a lot less obnoxious than any film Bay has made.

| Leave a comment

Bumblebee movie review: floats like a butterfly…

Wed, Dec 19, 2018
no comments yet

Nostalgic without being mindlessly retro; a sweet, heartfelt girl-and-her-alien-robot-car action-adventure buddy dramedy that hits all the right notes. Hailee Steinfeld is terrific, and there’s not a whiff of Michael Bay to be found.

| Leave a comment

Hunter Killer movie review: dead in the water

Sun, Oct 21, 2018
23 comments

The Hunt for Red October as made by a Michael Bay wannabe who can’t even rise to the level of giving-a-propagandistic-crap. Absurd geopolitics and laugh-out-loud clichés abound; tension and excitement do not.

| 23 Comments

at the 20th anniversary of ‘Titanic,’ where are all the knockoffs?

Wed, Nov 29, 2017
10 comments

We should be absolutely sick to death of all the cash-ins, pseudo-remakes and imitators. Where are they?

| 10 Comments

Fast & Furious 8 (aka The Fate of the Furious) movie review: notes from the critics’ ward

Wed, Apr 12, 2017
21 comments

EMPs and nukular codes and cyber crap and submarines, oh my! “What does this have to do with us?” Michelle Rodriguez cries, and I’m like I know, right?

| 21 Comments

Trolls movie review: you can’t stop the cute

Fri, Oct 28, 2016
4 comments

Cute and sweet and will put you to sleep, like a diabetic coma, and then it will smack you awake with its relentlessly cheery vivid-pastel optimism.

| 4 Comments

War Dogs movie review: sob havoc over this gun fun run

Wed, Aug 17, 2016
6 comments

A comedy only in the bleakest way, satire only in the sense that the whole world has become a parody of itself. Appalling and amusing in equal measure.

| 6 Comments

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi movie review: American mercenary

Fri, Jan 29, 2016
71 comments

Michael Bay propagandizes for a right-wing idea of “true America,” seething with disdain for anyone who isn’t a former elite soldier turned mercenary.

| 71 Comments
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