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FlickFilosopher.com

film criticism by maryann johanson | celebrating 25 years: 1997–2022

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Timothy Spall

The Last Bus movie review: middle of the road

Fri, Aug 27, 2021
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British twee is baked into this slight travelogue. Spall’s performance is lovely, and though the film mostly avoids overt schmaltz in favor of mild sentimentality, it’s gentle to the point of inertia.

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I’m on BBC World Service’s “The Arts Hour” again, Saturday, September 7th

Fri, Sep 06, 2019
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They like me — they really like me! — at “The Arts Hour” on the BBC World Service radio experience.

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Mrs Lowry & Son movie review: portrait of the artist as an abused man

Fri, Sep 06, 2019
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A study of the painter LS Lowry that, with sly whimsy and darkness, finds a universality of the creative psyche via the toxic relationship with his mother, who tried (unsuccessfully) to crush him.

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Finding Your Feet movie review: it’s never too late for a fresh start in life

Wed, Apr 04, 2018
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A tart, sharp, life-affirming dramedy, one that is slightly more edgy and far less predictable than it probably has any right to be. Celia Imrie and Imelda Staunton are magnificent.

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The Party movie review: bring your own battle

Fri, Feb 16, 2018
1 comment

Sally Potter’s brutally snappy take on the classic British drawing-room comedy hauls it into the 21st century with a cutting takedown of the anxieties and hypocrisies of well-off left-wingers.

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The Journey movie review: a civil end to war

Thu, Jun 15, 2017
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This fictional dialogue inspired by a private meeting between real-life enemies can’t muster up more than the usual banalities about the ethics of politics and war.

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Denial movie review: a film for the resistance

Mon, Jan 30, 2017
1 comment

A terrific legal procedural about defending factual truth and smacking dishonest sowers of doubt. An essential film for our era of “alternative facts.”

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Mr. Turner movie review: in the concrete abstract

Thu, Oct 30, 2014
6 comments

This is no stuffy costume drama but a richly lived-in visit to early-19th-century England that is rough, bawdy, often funny, and more often unsettling.

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movies I can’t wait to see at the 58th BFI London Film Festival

Thu, Sep 04, 2014
3 comments

LFF is a veritable orgy of cinema, and I love it. It’s exhausting, but I love it.

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The Love Punch review: below the belt

Fri, Apr 25, 2014
1 comment

The jokes are as creaky as the aching bunions and bad backs onscreen, but Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are incandescent together.

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