MaryAnn Johanson

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:
    3406
    Total QuickRatings:
    3
    Location:
    New York City
  • Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

    Showing 51 - 100 of 3406
    Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
    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
    59% The Last Stand (2013) " [U]nforgivably dumb and mindless... Korean director Kim Jee-woon shoots much of the film as if it were a sexytime autoporn advertisement..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 25, 2013
    79% Everyday () " The sense that we're peeking in on the life of a family under exceptional stress is profound..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 23, 2013
    21% That's My Boy (2012) " [M]ay be the most repulsive movie I've ever seen... [L]ike the evil Mirror Universe version of Ted." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 22, 2013
    79% Quartet (2013) " [S]o genuine and heartfelt that it transcends its own stereotypes and clichés to become something quite lovely." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 22, 2013
    —— The Comedian () Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 22, 2013
    46% The Sweeney (2013) " [C]omes across more like wishful thinking, as if both the onscreen fictional characters and the offscreen real-life filmmakers were fantasizing about being in a Hollywood action movie..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 21, 2013
    30% Broken City (2013) " I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the script... had been sitting around, unproduced, for 20 years, it's that musty in too many incomprehensible ways. " — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 17, 2013
    20% The Wee Man () " [I]n this almost genteel film -- or as genteel as a film about men who intimidate and kill for a living can be -- [notorious Scottish gangster Paul] Ferris is a little boy lost, a rare man of principle in an urban cesspit." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 17, 2013
    93% Barbara (2012) " [R]esides somewhere in an unsatisfying borderland between drama and thriller, never quite catching fire as either..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 16, 2013
    81% The Impossible (2012) " [B]rings a new heart to the disaster film, focusing not on the large scale of physical destruction but on the small scale of fragile, traumatized people amidst the unimaginable scale of the catastrophe..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 16, 2013
    93% Zero Dark Thirty (2013) " Too soon? Too soon for a kickass political action movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden?" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 10, 2013
    32% Gangster Squad (2013) " If L.A. Confidential were a comic book, this is the movie spun outta that: blustery postwar mythologizing about the violent birth of the modern metropolis, all pulpy-bright even when it's night, bursting with violence..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jan 9, 2013
    51% Promised Land (2013) " At every turn, and via a simple narrative that is so effortless it barely feels constructed at all, nothing here is quite what it seems, and everything is even more than what it is." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 27, 2012
    18% Parental Guidance (2012) " [M]ore akin to the tortures of the damned than the frothy yet tender holiday cinematic treat it thinks it is..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 24, 2012
    61% Jack Reacher (2012) " [L]ike a midseason episode of a basic-cable detective show you've never heard of." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 20, 2012
    64% The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (2012) " [A]chingly lovely... so full of bittersweet melancholy and yet so fixedly hopeful without ever having to touch on the sentimental..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 20, 2012
    88% Life of Pi (2012) " You could just wallow in the visual lavishness of this movie and not think at all about what it 'means' and be blown away by it." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 20, 2012
    95% West of Memphis (2012) " Public perception and police misconduct take well-deserved raps here, as do larger issues of American injustice..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 20, 2012
    88% Django Unchained (2012) " [A] dark fantasia of the pre-Civil War South that is hilarious, ferocious, shocking, and wise, sometimes all at once. " — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 19, 2012
    69% Les Misérables (2012) " There's an alchemy in [Hooper's] Les Misérables that brings together the best of screen and the best of stage..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 19, 2012
    87% Arbitrage (2012) " For all the satisfying ironies that are dished up... some of what we're served is hopelessly naive." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 17, 2012
    81% Pitch Perfect (2012) " There's enough charming here to make me wish that the movie had trusted itself enough to know that it doesn't need to dispense grossout humiliation to the characters in order to make them appealing." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 17, 2012
    31% Total Recall (2012) " [D]irector Len Underworld Wiseman's least hacktackular movie yet, which isn't to say that it's quality entertainment, but it is some solid B-grade processed-cheese-product movie junk food." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 17, 2012
    84% Smashed (2012) " [I]t's Winstead who is the real wonder... with an artless authenticity that is at once heartbreaking and heartening." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 14, 2012
    95% Chasing Ice (2012) " A few scientists pop their heads in here, a few charts are deployed, but Chasing Ice is powered primarily by the imagery, stark, irrefutable evidence that the planet is warming, not in one or two isolated places but everywhere." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 14, 2012
    66% Love Crime (2011) " [P]ure nefarious fun, as a satire of office politics and corporate sociopathy, for one of the most cleverly executed crimes I've ever seen on film, for its base feminism... for all the definitions of base." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 14, 2012
    65% The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) " [M]ore than a bit like slogging through overly completist volumes of fan fiction, and that is going to bore more casual moviegoers, and also some serious fans..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 10, 2012
    42% Heleno (2012) " [C]uriously all but avoids the game -- except for a few opportunities for Heleno, a hothead with no self-control, to berate and abuse his teammates -- in favor of a lurid focus on his other public exploits." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 7, 2012
    82% Seven Psychopaths (2012) " [B]ursting with equal parts exasperation, despair, cultural criticism, and black comedy..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 7, 2012
    58% I, Anna () " [A] gloss of edgy noirish elegance cannot disguise the fact that this is yet one more tiresome example of the thriller subgenre that posits that the most interesting thing that a woman can be is out of her mind." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 6, 2012
    32% The Oranges (2012) " I'm not sure a better cast has ever gone more ickily astray than in this most misbegotten of dramedies." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Dec 6, 2012
    68% Great Expectations (2013) " I love it when a film that is 'supposed' to be all stuffy and classic turns out to be this electric and alive..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 30, 2012
    74% Laurence Anyways (2013) " A ridiculously overlong and self-consciously 'arty' mishmash of baroque cartoonishness and moments that, to all outward appearances, are determined to be parodies of pretentious filmmaking." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 30, 2012
    82% Sightseers (2013) " [A]s relentlessly vicious as Kill List, [but] goes so insanely in the other direction when it comes to comedy -- and when it comes to a self-awareness of the dark humor often inherent in tales of brutal bloody murder..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 30, 2012
    51% Trouble with the Curve (2012) " Poor Clint Eastwood! He's a Gran Torino old coot in a Moneyball world." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 30, 2012
    91% The Hunt (2013) " The mass hysteria surrounding child sexual abuse has never seen as compelling or as cautionary an examination as the tragic mess this riveting Danish film delves into." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 30, 2012
    75% Killing Them Softly (2012) " [T]urns a very American mythology of crime and violence in on itself and from that inversion yanks out a mirror with which to show us a startling reflection of America..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 27, 2012
    92% Silver Linings Playbook (2012) " [H]alf thrilling, as it always is when a movie does well something The Movies don't typically try to do at all, and half uncomfortable, because it's not always easy to watch." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 23, 2012
    65% Starbuck (2013) " When are 'lovable' movie losers even more (allegedly) lovable? When they're all foreign and arthousey, of course!" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 23, 2012
    19% Gambit () " I marveled at how old-fashioned [the humor] is, like it was dusted off from the late 1960s and rushed out for us in the hopes we wouldn't notice its mustiness..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 22, 2012
    74% Rise of the Guardians (2012) " There's genuine magic here. Dark magic, even. That's a good thing." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 20, 2012
    48% The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012) " The world's most insipid vampires are back in inaction! Twilight has never been more about people standing around waiting for stuff to happen to them..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 19, 2012
    89% A Royal Affair (2012) " Rich people challenging the status quo? Socialism as cool and radical? Is this a fantasy realm? No, it's 250 years ago." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 16, 2012
    64% Up There () " [A] bleakly bitter and super sly black comedy... Burn Gorman is poignant and very funny, in the driest sort of way..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 16, 2012
    96% Undefeated (2012) " [E]xtraordinary in how it turns upside-down the typical feel-good, triumph-of-the-underdogs tropes of the subgenre..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 15, 2012
    88% Margin Call (2011) " Wily humor and sly observations about the lives of these high rollers are the highlights... It's when those give way to issues of morality that the film disappoints, just a little..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 13, 2012
    67% Friends With Kids (2012) " Trying to figure what is the most offensive thing about this accidental mashup of 70s Woody Allen and Sex and the City..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 12, 2012
    82% De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012) " The rather depressingly realistic approach to adult relationships... piles on grottiness and misery to a point beyond which it gets absurd." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 12, 2012
    45% On the Road (2012) " If you didn't know that Jack Kerouac's novel... was a seminal influence on postwar America... you would never, ever guess it from this lifeless, soulless, pointless adaptation." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 12, 2012
    86% Wreck-it Ralph (2012) " Best videogame movie ever! ... [A]mong the immense pleasures of this thoroughly enjoyable film are the many ingenious touches that bind it into a cohesive world..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 5, 2012
    41% Midnight's Children (2013) " [I]t's almost never a good idea to let novelists adapt their own fiction for the screen. A cold distant appraisal of what works onscreen and what doesn't is required, and it's not fair to expect writers to be so brutal with their babies." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 2, 2012
    45% The Details (2012) " The wacky is forced and unfunny and the misery is nowhere near wretched enough." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 1, 2012
    26% Fun Size (2012) " It's the usual assemblage of grossout horrors provided for your alleged amusement... The freshly upsetting thing here is that this is a Nickelodeon production -- you know, the cable network for kids..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 1, 2012
    56% For a Good Time, Call... (2012) " What saves this ultimately charming indie... from its inescapable sitcomishness and an over-reliance on some tired stereotypes is that it does manage genuine cuteness in a realm that has enormous potential to be icky and crude." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Nov 1, 2012
    92% Skyfall (2012) " There's an astonishing cool elegance to Skyfall, as if director Sam Mendes had stumbled over the idea of The Action Movie itself, and so was compelled to lay it all out for us with an air of wondrous discovery: Look what the movies can do!" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 25, 2012
    65% The Campaign (2012) " [B]itter, brutal, and -- unfortunately for the hopes and dreams of the American people -- very very pointedly funny..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 24, 2012
    79% Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012) " Sheer manic animated anarchy... It's as if the cool, smooth nonsense of the penguins' outrageous schemes -- yes, they're back too -- were allowed to take over the entire film..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 24, 2012
    67% Cloud Atlas (2012) " It's bonkers how far across time and across the planet this insanely grand matrix of interconnected tales ranges... I love this movie. It's every movie. It's the ultimate movie." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 22, 2012
    96% Argo (2012) " I was literally in tears for parts of Argo, a purely physical reaction, not an emotional one, to deal with the tension... That isn't only some serious movie magic, it's a downright master class in suspense filmmaking from director Ben Affleck." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 18, 2012
    38% Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) " Everything... concerning the royals -- portrayed with grace, aplomb, and resolute humanity by the wonderful Samuel West and the goddesslike Olivia Colman -- is fantastic. It's very much the sequel to The King's Speech..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 17, 2012
    25% Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) " The rampant dullness of the movie is shocking, I will grant it this much. Ironically, for all that, as with the earlier films, it's mostly about watching people sleep, PA4 might best be used as a soothing nightlight, it's that monotonous." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 16, 2012
    79% Ruby Sparks (2012) " [B]arely distinguishable from other similar tales of young men who need a schooling in the realities of not being a selfish jerk, with one glaring exception: ... this one is all about teaching Calvin that -- spoiler! -- women are people." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 12, 2012
    44% Casa de mi padre (2012) " [S]ubtle humor that slips under your radar instead of bashing you over the head is what makes Casa one of the more adventurous comedies in recent years..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 9, 2012
    63% Sinister (2012) " The psychological vagaries of real people who commit terrible crimes and real people who investigate them are not in the cards here, not when the unaccountable supernatural can be hauled in..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 8, 2012
    87% Frankenweenie (2012) " [T]he Tim Burton-est movie... in a long while, not merely because it embodies all those wonderfully weird and humanist Burton attitudes but also because only Burton would think to make a stop-motion film in glorious, creamy, black-and-white." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 2, 2012
    21% Taken 2 (2012) " If this is any indication, Taken 3 will be nothing but Liam Neeson running around whatever European city ponies up the biggest tax credits, growling and beating up random swarthy passersby... It would be only a tiny step below this." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Oct 1, 2012
    11% House at the End of the Street (2012) " [T]he scariest thing about [this] is that this sort of junk is considered a good career move for a young actress who's just come off a small film from a respected indie director..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 27, 2012
    87% ParaNorman (2012) " Dismal, yet profound and pungent... [M]ake[s] its points in ways more sharp and brutal than other 'children's' films..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 27, 2012
    74% Hope Springs (2012) " [D]azzlingly graceful as a narrative and brutally frank emotionally, while still also working as a piece of popcorn entertainment..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 27, 2012
    58% Hysteria (2012) " [B]reezy, witty, and only gently naughty... [H]ello, steampunk orgasm!" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 21, 2012
    56% Now Is Good (2013) " Why is [Dakota Fanning] living onscreen the way that so few female protagonists get to live? Because she's dying. *sigh*" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 21, 2012
    85% End of Watch (2012) " Howls... with a messy, human authenticity that transcends genre tropes to smack you in the face with beseeching truths about the contradictions of police work." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 17, 2012
    76% Premium Rush (2012) " [A] slyly structured, pseudo-real-time carnival ride ripples with undercurrents of moral complexity... Joseph Gordon-Levitt... is effortlessly cool and engaging onscreen, always." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 14, 2012
    64% Anna Karenina (2012) " There is no pretense that Wright is giving us a realistic depiction of late-19th-century Russia... he's underscoring the artificiality of cinema itself. That will be uncomfortable to some..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 12, 2012
    95% The Queen of Versailles (2012) " [E]nds up an ever less slightly ungenerous look at the .01 percent than it might have been... But this is still a brutal film from many angles." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 10, 2012
    78% Dredd (2012) " [Karl] Urban... is still totally riveting with only his mouth and his manly, unshaven chin with which to express himself... [T]here's a surprising and gratifying minimalism to Dredd." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 7, 2012
    5% The Cold Light of Day (2012) " Brought to you by the Madrid Film Tax Credit Production Office and the Society for the Promotion of Henry Cavill as the Next Big Thing!" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Sep 3, 2012
    55% Bachelorette (2012) " [U]nspeakably pitiless... It's like this is a comedy from Star Trek's vicious Mirror Universe, where backstabbing and scheming are just the way things are." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 30, 2012
    17% A Few Best Men () " There isn't one single laugh here for anyone who doesn't think that women are disgusting, men are morons, homosexuality is terrifying, and friendship is about cruelty and envy." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 30, 2012
    67% Lawless (2012) " This is a novel of a film, magnificently observed moments of human nature placed within a complex thematic tapestry... Tom Hardy... is glorious, making tiny gestures and pensive grunts enormously expressive; and Guy Pearce is superb..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 28, 2012
    64% Cosmopolis (2012) " Robert Pattinson... brings a slick, knowing roboticness to a man desperate to maintain a pretense of control and command of the world around him." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 24, 2012
    93% Shadow Dancer (2013) " Even the marvelous performances by Owen and the on-the-rise Riseborough are not enough to ratchet up the drama to the level of the totally gripping -- a damn shame and something of a puzzler..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 24, 2012
    51% The Three Stooges (2012) " We need to be fixing global warming. And yet people who are probably pretty smart and consider themselves creative thinkers are spending their time on this." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 24, 2012
    78% Brave (2012) " [T]urns the Disney-princess paradigm upside down and inside out... [Y]es, it is possible to tell a story about a female protagonist that is not about finding romance." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 14, 2012
    56% The Bourne Legacy (2012) " Bourne fan fiction. But it's the rare sort of good fanfic: utterly inconsequential, of course, but a whole lotta fun. It's a turn-your-brain-off popcorn flick for people who don't like to turn our brains off just because we're at The Movies." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 13, 2012
    65% The Expendables 2 (2012) " There's a level of brutal, boring stupidity here that makes The A-Team look like it was written by Sun Tzu. It's all a big joke. Except it isn't in the least bit funny." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 13, 2012
    67% Jackpot (Arme Riddere) () " [H]as some outrageously, disgustingly funny moments -- I laughed a lot, in isolated bursts -- but it's lacking that certain oomph that makes it unquestionably brilliant." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 10, 2012
    21% 360 (2012) " [A] subtle and striking globehopping ensemble drama of human interactions shaped by sex and love, honesty and deception, allure and retreat..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 10, 2012
    42% Step Up 4: Miami Heat (2012) " [T]he dancing fantastic... the sexy is unusually positive... [but] the moment the dancing stops, it all stumbles into the howlingly ridiculous..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 9, 2012
    97% Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012) " [H]as a sense of the gloss to it: Ai is such a complex man, and he's operating in an environment that is alien to most Westerners, and so at every turn here, I wanted to get into much more depth than Klayman takes us to. " — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 9, 2012
    75% Sound of My Voice (2012) " Argh! Actor and screenwriter Brit Marling has done it again! She's come up with an intriguing science-fictional concept as the basis for an indie arthouse drama -- and she doesn't know what to do with it." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 6, 2012
    50% Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012) " Greg Heffley... will learn some further lessons about not being a preteen jerk, but his audience will still be encouraged to find hilarity in crotch injuries and budding homophobia." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 3, 2012
    69% Ted (2012) " [W]orks so well not just because the entire story so casually accepts the reality of a living teddy bear... but because Wahlberg is so wholly dedicated to... emotional authenticity..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Aug 1, 2012
    34% Lola Versus (2012) " So awesome, universe! The world hasn't been full enough yet of movies about women who are almost totally obsessed almost exclusively with romance that we cannot use one more of them. Hoorah!" — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jul 31, 2012
    54% Dr Seuss' The Lorax (2012) " [Hollywood] simply doesn't see girls' and women's lives and needs as worthy of telling stories about... not even when one particular girl's desires are the obvious driver for the story being told." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jul 30, 2012
    96% Searching for Sugar Man (2012) " I can't remember the last time a film rocked my world and blew my mind like... [t]his is a wholly extraordinary movie [does]..." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jul 26, 2012
    87% The Dark Knight Rises (2012) " This may be the darkest, the grimmest, the most depressing summer popcorn movie ever. It is not summery. It is not popcorny... This is a beast of a film... a beast that has us all in its red and rageful glare." — Flick Filosopher
    Posted Jul 16, 2012
    Showing 51 - 100 of 3406
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