
weekend watchlist: is it good to be the queen?
Plus a teenage con artist, a skewering of late-night comedy, and more… (First published September 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Plus a teenage con artist, a skewering of late-night comedy, and more… (First published September 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Solid, old-school man-versus-nature adventure melodrama, with a simmering green awareness; rollicking, smart, breathtaking, and sobering.
Hmm. Is there something in the zeitgeist that’s prompting movies about desolation and survival in harsh conditions?
It’s movies like this one that make me despair. Because it is going to make a bazillion bucks at the box office around the world, and there’s absolute nothing here that warrants such success.
Who knew there was so much on a cruise ship that could explode so spectacularly? Plus: ohmigod, Josh Lucas!
‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it’ implies that there aren’t some people who actually enjoy doing a dirty job. As much as The Perfect Storm is an intense and terrifying man-against-nature action movie, it’s an unsentimental and uncliched drama about, as mythologist Joseph Campbell termed it, following your bliss: doing what you’re ‘made to do’ even in the face of opposition from all around you, even to the point of risking your life.