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:: 3246
Total QuickRatings:: 3

Location:: New York City

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 3246

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
	79%	Prometheus (2012)	" [W]ant[s] to be... ambitious SF drama. [But] somewhere along the way, the provocative speculation and the seriocomic tragedy got lost. Oh, and the characters got forgotten, too. Plus there's precious little authentic drama." — Flick Filosopher Posted Jun 4, 2012
—	——	Last Man on Planet Earth (2000)	— Flick Filosopher Posted May 31, 2012
	46%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" Snow is... meant to be ethereal. Like a Disney princess, even, little birdies alighting on her slender white fingers and whatnot. But there is nothing ethereal about Stewart -- she is all id." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 29, 2012
	23%	What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)	" Messy? Complicated? Nah. Turns out all you should expect when you're expecting is to live in the midst of a nine-month sitcom." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 29, 2012
	75%	Free Men (2012)	" I kept hoping to get caught up in it in more than a coolly intellectual way, but that never happened." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 25, 2012
	68%	Men in Black III (2012)	" [I]t's funny, it's thrilling -- the actual sequences of travelling through time are intense and inventive -- and it's even poignant." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 22, 2012
	80%	2 Days in New York (2012)	" Delpy... skillfully deploys her decidedly nonprecious quirk in order to slide some sly, wise observations about the compromises of all sorts of love and relationships into her funny slice of New York life." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 18, 2012
	93%	She Monkeys (Apflickorna) (2011)	" [A] bitter, stalkerish view of the inner lives of girls that pushes boundaries to get nowhere." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 18, 2012
	83%	The Raid: Redemption (2012)	" [T]his isn't a movie so much as a series of martial-arts duels strung together along the flimsiest of narrative threads." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 18, 2012
	58%	The Dictator (2012)	" [Baron Cohen] understands perfectly well whom the object of his rage should have been... It's just that as screenwriter, he couldn't figure out how to make the richly deserving powerful-and-corrupt the butt of comedic ire." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 17, 2012
	77%	Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2012)	" Those with a very low tolerance for indie quirk may find their patience tried, but I, who have been mixed on the Duplasses and really hated their last film, the similarly themed Cyrus, kinda couldn't help being charmed by this one." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 17, 2012
	14%	Piranha 3DD (2012)	" Oh, I know, we're not supposed to bother the beautiful minds of fanboys by pointing out the misogynist subtexts of their gorefests. It's just a movie, boys will be boys, etc and so on. Well, tough... someone has to tell them." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 14, 2012
—	——	American Reunion ()	— Flick Filosopher Posted May 11, 2012
	40%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" [S]hockingly, appallingly inept, and it keeps getting worse and worse, as if it were descending into its very own bespoke circle of cinematic hell... Depp [is] parodying himself, which is hugely unpleasant to watch..." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 10, 2012
	71%	African Cats (2011)	" [G]orgeously photographed, astonishingly intimate... We have never seen lions and cheetahs like this before; you won't believe it can have been possible for cameras to get so close without disturbing the animals they're watching..." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 9, 2012
	67%	Juan of the Dead (2012)	" [C]learly wants to invoke motifs of revolution rocking the status quo and of how people cope under the most extreme expressions of communist... but the humor falls flat -- waaaay flat -- for anyone not Cuban, or not at least familiar with life in Cuba..." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 3, 2012
	42%	Silent House (2012)	" Olsen is, without question, one of the most intriguing, most thrilling young talents to burst onto the scene in years, and she's very very good here... so good that I wished the movie was kinder to her as a talent..." — Flick Filosopher Posted May 3, 2012
	43%	American Reunion (2012)	" [T]he American Pie... remain as fixedly bland as ever, and so their latest... cinematic outing can hope to be in the least bit 'appealing' only by trotting out the same tedious sitcom blend of crude vulgarity and sappy sentiment. " — Flick Filosopher Posted May 3, 2012
—	100%	Fury (1936)	— Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 27, 2012
	93%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" [S]upercool, superfun... [A] real geek's brew... of premises and possibilities. All of which somehow work together, don't feel underdone, and leave us feeling like, for all its absurdity, everything we see is happening in a real space to real people." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 26, 2012
	68%	Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012)	" See! This is how you do romantic comedy!... You make it funny by putting real people in a situation that's a just tad fantastical and watch them cope with it." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 25, 2012
	55%	Safe (2012)	" [A] viciously cynical dark fantasy that fashions a new mythos of post-9/11 New York unlike anything we've seen... The utter lack of sentimentality in a story ripe for it only adds to its conviction." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 23, 2012
	43%	Transit (2012)	" Director Antonio Negret apparently strove to ensure that his film looks cheap, but that would be forgivable if Michael Gilvary's script wasn't so desperately stupid when it isn't psychologically risible. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 23, 2012
	11%	Gone (2012)	" With 'friends' like this movie, the feminist cause doesn't need enemies... [E]ven if Jill isn't crazy... she's still crazy, because she does not behave like a sane person." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 23, 2012
	22%	The Samaritan (2012)	" If the trickery isn't quite as multilayered as we might hope, there's still Jackson's furious performance to appreciate. He as fun to watch as he always is." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 23, 2012
	20%	The Lucky One (2012)	" Never let it be said that Nicholas Sparks doesn't prefer easy fake greeting-card melodrama instead of something that looks more like complicated reality." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 20, 2012
	86%	The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)	" [Not] just a hoot and half -- funny, clever, and wittily animated, basically pure delightful perfection -- but perhaps the sneakiest educational film ever... [F]riends are an excellent sort of booty, but... knowledge is the bestest booty of all." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 16, 2012
	34%	Battleship (2012)	" [P]retty much the dullest alien invasion movie ever, featuring an uninteresting incursion by nondescript aliens doing boring things and not even blowing [stuff] up in exciting new ways. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 12, 2012
	90%	The Cabin in the Woods (2012)	" Absolutely genius movie. Totally brilliant... I don't know how anyone can possibly make a horror movie again. Cabin renders all past and future examples of the genre superfluous..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 9, 2012
	76%	A Cat in Paris (2012)	" [W]hy does this children's book of a film morph, after a delightful, beautifully observed, feline-biographical opening, into a gangster crime story? It's weird, is what it is. " — Flick Filosopher Posted Apr 5, 2012
	90%	Headhunters (2012)	" [A] hilarious satire on male inadequacy disguised as an outrageously violent crime thriller. It's all the dck-measuring and overcompensating elevated out of the subtext to actively fuel the humor and the suspense..." — Flick Filosopher* Posted Apr 5, 2012
	50%	Mirror Mirror (2012)	" [A] big basket of nutty... There are giant dwarves here, and sexy funny flirty swordfighting, and sweet forlorn heartache, and -- if you stay through the credits -- a Bollywood dance number." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 30, 2012
	25%	Wrath of the Titans (2012)	" [I]ncompetent on the most basic levels. There's no physical or narrative context for anything... It's bewildering. It's mind-boggling. It can only be the work of trickster gods attempting to drive us mad." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 30, 2012
	85%	The Hunger Games (2012)	" [S]omehow, some way, the core of what makes [the] books such sharp satire and such enthralling adventure was retained... [I]sn't better than or worse than the novel -- it's the perfect accompaniment to it." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 21, 2012
	90%	In Darkness (2012)	" [E]legantly presented, chock full of moments of dreadful suspense in a horrible milieu... and buoyed by strikingly naturalistic performances..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 16, 2012
	86%	The Forgiveness of Blood (2012)	" American filmmaker Joshua Marston... present[s] characters and cultures alien to his audiences' eyes in ways that render them instantly and easily recognizable and sympathetic..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 15, 2012
	51%	Contraband (2012)	" It's a good thing Mark Wahlberg is so effortlessly charming, because that's part of what keeps this rather generic heist thriller rolling along as smoothly as it does." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 15, 2012
	85%	21 Jump Street (2012)	" [F]ueled almost entirely by an appreciation of its own ridiculousness, yet one that balances the absurdity with some smart truths... It's tough to be sensitive about the silly, but directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller... pull it off." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 12, 2012
	21%	The Raven (2012)	" [C]omes nowhere near living up to its 'Edgar Allan Poe solves mysteries' potential. It's pretty much a standard serial killer flick dressed up in 19th-century drag." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 9, 2012
	75%	Trishna (2012)	" Classic tragic story is still classic, tragic when moved to the modern world... [S]tunning... in a way that is both magnificent and horrifying..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 9, 2012
	39%	Bel Ami (2012)	" Welcome to the costume-drama equivalent of Project X, celebrating misogyny and male sociopathy as just the way things are, and what else can ya expect from the world?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 8, 2012
	52%	John Carter (2012)	" [A] dreary Disneyfied inconsequence [that] features all the bigotries of century-old pulp fiction and none of the romance, neither the sexual nor the adventurous kind." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 6, 2012
	26%	Project X (2012)	" It is not normal adolescent rebellion depicted here: it is sociopathic insurrection. It's an orgy of destruction that is meant to be cool... It's a celebration of colossal adolescent idiocy as something we should all aspire to..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Mar 1, 2012
	76%	The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)	" [K]ooky-cutesy dramedy [is] the height of clich�d predictability [but] Wilkinson, Dench, and Nighy are a pleasure to watch, always, and especially so in the occasional moments they have together here..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 29, 2012
	5%	Black Gold ()	" 'Is there a greater curse than to be a poor king?' Nesib asks sadly early on. Yes: letting a potentially great story slide away into mediocrity." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 29, 2012
	25%	This Means War (2012)	" I'd call this How to Lose a Spy in 10 Days, except all along I was rooting for nothing but for Witherspoon to realize what a couple of jerks both guys are and to dump them both..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 27, 2012
	55%	In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)	" [T]hough it is written and directed by actress Angelina Jolie... there is nothing 'Hollywood' about this film: it stars local actors and is in the local languages, and it shies not one whit from the horrors of the war." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 24, 2012
	47%	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)	" [A] dark daydream about coping with the secret guilts we all harbor, about the creeping horror of thinking about that day that all New Yorkers dealt with..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 24, 2012
	85%	A Better Life (2011)	" [A] gentle, honest, heartfelt film, but [it] does not have much to offer beyond an earnest respect for a segment of American society that is too often derided..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Feb 22, 2012

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