MaryAnn Johanson Movie Reviews & Previews

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MaryAnn Johanson

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage." -- Raiders of the Lost Ark

"One should not believe in an ism." -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

"It's not that I'm lazy; it's that I just don't care." -- Office Space

"There's not a lot of money in revenge." -- The Princess Bride "

Agrees with the Tomatometer 76% of the time.

Biography:: "One of online’s finest" film critics, or so says trade mag Variety, MaryAnn Johanson is a New York City-based freelance writer who loves movies but hates what Hollywood sometimes does to them. She is the webmaster and sole critic on FlickFilosopher.com, founded in 1997 and now one of the most popular movie-related sites on the Internet. She has appeared as a cultural commentator on BBC Radio, and she is a founding member of Cinemarati: The Web Alliance for Film Commentary. She is also an award-winning screenwriter. She doesn’t feel it’s necessary to divulge how many cats she lives with, or the state of their mental health.
Favorites:: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eight Dimension, The Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap, Ghostbusters
Publications:: Apollo Guide , AWFJ Women on Film , Film.com , Flick Filosopher
Critics' Group:: Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 3403
Total QuickRatings:: 3

Location:: New York City

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 3403

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
88%	Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)	" I enjoyed Into Darkness immensely, and I can't wait to see it again... but I'm not sure I could call this a summery popcorny sort of film. It's too grim for that." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 8, 2013
74%	Chimpanzee (2012)	" Cuteness proximity alert! Cuteness proximity alert!" — Flick Filosopher Posted May 3, 2013
60%	I'm So Excited! (2013)	" The things that qualify as 'awesome' in the world of Pedro Almodóvar boggle my mind." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 2, 2013
67%	The Iceman (2013)	" [A]n oft-told tale, though one that does come alive in a few places that make it worth a look. The always electrifying Michael Shannon... enjoys what may be the fullest expression of his smoldering onscreen rage yet." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 2, 2013
74%	Love Is All You Need (2013)	" [J]ust at the point when it might have tipped over into dreadful sitcomishness, director Susanne Bier... starts finding achingly poignant moments amidst the familial insanity..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 26, 2013
71%	The Look of Love ()	" It's more than a disappointment -- it's a puzzlement. How did Michael Winterbottom, who's made so many intriguing movies that veer well away from the cautious, make a film so tediously conservative...?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 26, 2013
77%	Iron Man 3 (2013)	" [C]ould be the whip-smartest and most affecting superhero movie yet... [Shane Black and Robert Downey Jr. bring an] unexpected combination of sweetness and verve and vulnerability..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 25, 2013
93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" You've seen this story before, but never pulled off with so much joie de vivre." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 16, 2013
56%	Oblivion (2013)	" Earth may be a radioactive wasteland, all its cities erased from the planet, but it's a bright, sunny kind of postapocalyptic hellscape... [It's] postcard-pretty -- greetings from afterscape Earth! -- in a strikingly original sci-fi way." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 12, 2013
92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" A fascinating film offering a startling look inside one of the most tightlipped intelligence agencies on the planet, and providing powerful resonances with the US and UK's "war on terror"." — Film4 Posted Apr 11, 2013
92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" [T]he Oscar-nominated documentary in which the six living former heads of Shin Bet, the ultrasecretive Israeli domestic security agency, talk about their antiterrorism work..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 11, 2013
81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" It feels like an act of subversion in the movie culture of the moment... to create a film this satisfyingly meandering, as if it's discovering how loose and confounding reality can be as it goes along..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 9, 2013
34%	The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)	" Timothy's magic is as modest as can be, and its aim is a bit off... [U]ndemanding, inoffensive, and instantly forgettable." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 5, 2013
79%	A Late Quartet (2012)	" [L]ays on [its] metaphor a little too thickly, [but] all is preforgiven... by the sheer joy of getting to watch Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, and Philip Seymour Hoffman rattle around one another..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 4, 2013
9%	The Host (2013)	" Stephenie Meyer has found a whole new way for teen girls to be conflicted about sex..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 4, 2013
62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" Is it gory? Sure. This is one of the most disgusting movies I've ever seen, grading strictly on a scale of blood and guts and viscera -- and burns and slashes and stabs and cuts and bashes and so on. But terrifying? Hardly." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 3, 2013
68%	Trance (2013)	" [D]eliciously preposterous... one of the most original heist flicks ever..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 28, 2013
28%	G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)	" The only relatively lucid thing Retaliation has on its side is an 'in association with Hasbro' credit, which makes you go, 'Ah, they tried to make something with all the pizzazz and credibility of a toy commercial. Pity they failed.'" — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 26, 2013
52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" It could almost be funny, how Jack keeps trying to fly off into could-be fascinating directions and then gets yanked back into a mushy mediocrity." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 22, 2013
20%	Identity Thief (2013)	" Bateman and McCarthy are so fabulous in the overall, apart from this crap, and they, as actors and human beings, do not warrant the treatment they get here." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 21, 2013
69%	The Croods (2013)	" Was [this] secretly produced by the Institute for Creation Research?... [W]ho but Western creationists would believe that... humanity was created intact with 1950s values?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 20, 2013
92%	Lore (2013)	" Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go. Except this ain't no fairy tale... unless it is, perhaps, a hint of the beginnings of a new mythology of ... scary childhood and even scarier adolescence..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 14, 2013
90%	Bernie (2012)	" It's so lovely to see Jack Black being this kind of actor. I hope he does it more often." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 13, 2013
38%	The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)	" Unlike 99 percent of what passes for comedy in Hollywood at the moment... maintain[s] its sense of ridiculousness throughout, and utterly fails -- thank goodness and alakazam! -- to descend into gloopy sentiment in the last 20 minutes. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 12, 2013
22%	Alice (2008)	" More's the pity that it ends up feeling pointless and empty and humorless, for it starts off rather intriguing." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 8, 2013
60%	Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)	" More like the Bland and the Mediocre... It's impossible to believe this is a Sam Raimi film." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 7, 2013
65%	A Fierce Green Fire (2013)	" [A] clear-eyed and much-needed overview of the modern history of people fighting for nature without even realizing, way back when, that they were also fighting for human beings as an inextricable part of nature..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 1, 2013
13%	Safe Haven (2013)	" I like to imagine that Nicholas Sparks realized he couldn't write yet another prequel story about how the people whose photos come with the picture frames fell in love. So he figured he'd try a thriller!" — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 28, 2013
14%	Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)	" Lacks all sense of magic, of myth, of danger, of humor, of power. A compete and utter all-around disaster..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 28, 2013
100%	The Invisible War (2012)	" This is an enraging film, as it is meant to be, [and] not just because it is a microcosm of rape culture, the collection of pervasive attitudes that rule our society that deny and dismiss men's violence against women. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 22, 2013
65%	Mama (2013)	" There is some majorly cheesy stuff going on here... but some elegantly simple scares too, really primal stuff involving unknown things that might be under the bed and shadowy things that might be in the closet. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 21, 2013
100%	How to Survive a Plague (2012)	" [A] glorious ode to the supposition that a small group of committed people can change the world..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 21, 2013
95%	5 Broken Cameras (2012)	" [A] distressing portrait of everyday life in the West Bank... [B]oth horrific... and powerfully warm, funny, and human." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 21, 2013
100%	False Trail (Jägarna 2) ()	" [I]f you're weary of [Peter] Stormare's one-dimensional Hollywood villains... here's a chance to see him in his natural environment and much more truly disturbing than he usually is permitted to be." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 18, 2013
15%	A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)	" Director John Moore demolishes with all the rage of a petulant toddler and none of the panache of, say, Godzilla." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 14, 2013
45%	Beautiful Creatures (2013)	" [C]learly hoping to ride on Twilight's supernatural star-crossed sex-free teenage-romance coattails... Apparently, fantasies for young girls that teach them to hate their own humanity are officially a thing now." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 14, 2013
80%	Warm Bodies (2013)	" [C]ontent[s] itself with the mildest of tweaks at both the zombie and the romantic-comedy genres..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 11, 2013
14%	Spiders (2013)	" What has happened to America's cheesy film industry? Where is the pride of our grade-Z filmmakers? Does no one care anymore about making decent bad movies?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 9, 2013
63%	I Give It a Year (2013)	" [A] movie to make you hate romance, and romantic comedies, and people. How does anyone look at this root canal of a flick and not conclude that humanity is awful and deserves to die in a fire?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 7, 2013
95%	The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Animation (2013)	" 'Paperman'... might be the most romantic movie of the year..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 6, 2013
79%	Flight (2012)	" [E]nds up saying, [Expletive] those people who want more than a nice risk-free complacent ending." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 6, 2013
98%	Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God (2012)	" 'Angry' doesn't even begin to cover how this film makes me feel. It probably won't cover you, either." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 4, 2013
47%	Bullet to the Head (2013)	" [D]amn near the most unwatchable piece of junk I've seen that hasn't gone straight to DVD or late-night cable. It's barely even a movie, in fact -- it's more like a meatbrawl..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 4, 2013
64%	Antiviral (2013)	" [A] twisted, creepy extrapolation of our obsession with celebrity... [O]ne of the more disturbing and more unsettling films I've seen in a quite a while... and also one of the cleverest examples of science fiction cinema in years..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 4, 2013
89%	Koch (2013)	" With great good humor... and a solid, old-fashioned stick-to-it-iveness, Barsky paints a warts-and-all portrait of Koch that is historically compelling, journalistically rigorous, and bursting with Essence of Koch..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Jan 31, 2013
100%	The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Live Action (2013)	" My favorite film of the lot is the French-Belgian 'Death of a Shadow'... a steampunkish science fantasy..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Jan 30, 2013
93%	Amour (2012)	" This is beautiful film, and a terrible one: devastating to stick out, and yet one of the most remarkable romances ever made..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Jan 30, 2013
73%	Chained (2012)	" Not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit, and probably not even for fans of more traditional horror films... this is a grenade lobbed into a genre that desperately needs its bones rattled." — Flick Filosopher Posted Jan 28, 2013
4%	Movie 43 (2013)	" My oh my, but it is so cute what Movie 43 thinks is 'dangerous' and 'offensive'!" — Flick Filosopher Posted Jan 25, 2013

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