film criticism by maryann johanson | handcrafted since 1997
Not a knockoff of that other quiet horror flick, though this familiar monster movie works hard to convince otherwise. But the terrific cast makes it worth a look, at least for Netflix subscribers.
Courtroom drama? Portrait of a marriage? Character study of a workaholic? This frustratingly random film cannot figure out what it is or what it wants to say… but Emma Thompson’s beautifully empathetic performance is worth your time.
Embarrassingly bad CGI; pratfalls; genital humor; denigration of cat ladies; horrible clichés and stereotypes. This is the cinematic equivalent of stepping in dog poop. You know, for kids!
In the moment of #MeToo and #TimesUp, this tale of the relationship between an older male professor and his young female student is howlingly out of step and outrageously tone deaf. And that’s on top of its tedious clichés.
A bleakly funny, genteelly twisted gloss on the clichés of temperamental creative genius, via the relationship between an artist and his subject, one that questions the sometimes high personal price of great art.
An elegy for old-school reportage and the people who pursue it, and a journalistic procedural with a snappy rush of urgent discovery and consequence.
One of the smartest and most enthralling SF film series ever breaks more new ground as it ends on notes as emotional and provocative as they are explosive.
Romantic and funny and smart and wise and just plain different. This is a historical costume dramedy romp about gardening. How cool is that?
Piles of noirish exposition get the better of Jason Statham in this unpleasantly retrograde crime drama. What happened in Vegas should have stayed there.
Visually ravishing, as you’d expect from Hayao Miyazaki, but there is, disappointingly, no drama and no conflict here.
