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Joanne Laurier

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Born in Massachusetts, a regular contributor on film and art to the World Socialist Web Site since 2000.

Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (2025) 98% 4/4 EDIT “Fatima lives with her family in a small apartment in one of the most devastated areas of northern Gaza Access to basic necessities such as food, water and electricity is highly unreliable; over time, shortages worsen and Fatima … "eating like animals"” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 19, 2026 Full Review Frankenstein (2025) 85% 2/4 EDIT “A visually imaginative work to some extent, with a number of urgent and disturbing sequences and an overall gravitas, but its conceptions in the end fail to rise above the relatively pedestrian and predictable” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Battleship Potemkin (1925) 100% 4/4 EDIT “ ... captures the brutality of the regime that the workers and sailors tried unsuccessfully to overthrow in 1905 ... This complex revolutionary process is captured in some of the most stunning and iconic images ever committed to film.” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review The Phoenician Scheme (2025) 77% 4/4 EDIT “Has Anderson got the present situation right? No, not exactly. There are tangents and red herrings and dead ends here. But the filmmaker is on a healthy path. Without a doubt, gangster capitalists are among the central figures of our times.” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 18, 2025 Full Review Triumph (2024) 2/4 EDIT “The picture emerges of an extremely backward, grasping and rather stupid ruling elite dreaming of “national greatness.”” – World Socialist Web Site May 10, 2025 Full Review Cloud (2024) 93% EDIT “Everyone in Cloud is either a fraudster, a cynic, an opportunist or a psychopath. Not a single one of them deserves the viewer’s concern or attention. How accurate is that as a view of life in Japan, or anywhere else?” – World Socialist Web Site May 10, 2025 Full Review Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) (2025) 85% 2/4 EDIT “The story gets a bit tedious. Without anger, protest, genuine non-conformism, the details of such lives are not that fascinating or illuminating.” – World Socialist Web Site May 10, 2025 Full Review Ricky (2025) 87% 2/4 EDIT “The ambitions are worthy ones, as far as they go, but the results are somewhat dull. Everything is rounded off to grey, to drabness, in the interests presumably of “realism.”” – World Socialist Web Site May 10, 2025 Full Review Borderland: The Line Within (2024) EDIT “The film is an incisive exploration of the “border industrial complex,” a term used to describe the profitable systems, worth billions of dollars annually, built around capturing, incarcerating and deporting immigrants. ” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 24, 2025 Full Review The Room Next Door (2024) 80% EDIT “Does being able to die at one’s own hand at the moment one chooses really seem the most pressing issue in America or the world today?” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 24, 2025 Full Review Hard Truths (2024) 95% EDIT “The film is deliberate, conscious of its aims, but also contains the contradictoriness and unexpectedness of real life.” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 24, 2025 Full Review Alam (2022) 100% EDIT “Alam is a sincere and honest film. Its thoughtful presentation of its central character’s dilemma—the desire to live a normal life under conditions of perpetual repression and violence ...—has a resonance beyond the borders of the Middle East.” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 13, 2025 Full Review H2: The Occupation Lab (2022) EDIT “In their 2022 documentary H2: The Occupation Lab, Israeli filmmakers Idit Avrahami and Noam Sheizaf detail the impact of fascistic Jewish settlers, backed by the Israeli military, on the Palestinian city of Hebron and its population.” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 13, 2025 Full Review Where Olive Trees Weep (2024) EDIT “Where Olive Trees Weep is a sensitively and movingly made film about the plight of the Palestinian people, filmed in 2022 in the occupied West Bank, directed by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 13, 2025 Full Review The Goat Life (2024) 78% EDIT “The filmmakers in this case have confronted an immense injustice and tragedy of our time head-on and deserve full credit.” – World Socialist Web Site Oct 4, 2024 Full Review One Life (2023) 91% EDIT “For filmmaking to portray the barbarism of fascism in all its aspects therefore retains its burning relevance and necessity.” – World Socialist Web Site Aug 26, 2024 Full Review Thieves Like Us (1974) 81% EDIT “The film was made at a time of upheaval and convulsion, even chaos, qualities that the master improviser Altman thrived on. The period’s rebelliousness undoubtedly played a role in making Thieves Like Us one of his most compelling films.” – World Socialist Web Site May 30, 2024 Full Review Empty Nets (2023) 100% EDIT “Empty Nets is an affecting film. Cinematographer Ashkan Ashkani adds to the strong, suggestive atmosphere, contrasting the natural turbulence of the ocean to the violence of an irrational social order.” – World Socialist Web Site May 30, 2024 Full Review The Teacher (2023) 83% EDIT “The immense moral and political pressures brought to bear on the Palestinian population ... bring to mind similar strains and terrors for people in those portions of Europe and elsewhere under Nazi rule during World War II.” – World Socialist Web Site May 30, 2024 Full Review The Zone of Interest (2023) 93% EDIT “The Zone of Interest is a misguided and disoriented work, one that conceals the concrete historical circumstances that produced someone like Höss, and therefore weakens the ability of the population today to defeat and destroy the fascist menace.” – World Socialist Web Site Mar 8, 2024 Full Review American Fiction (2023) 93% EDIT “In the end, what the film counterposes to “black trauma porn,” as Monk refers to it, which coins fortunes from backwardness, is a bland middle class household full of doctors.” – World Socialist Web Site Feb 23, 2024 Full Review The Holdovers (2023) 97% EDIT “A pleasant, digestible film and the three leads are appealing. ... It is not a genuine advance for the director. The comedy-drama’s general trajectory and ultimately heartwarming denouement are set out for all to see virtually from its opening sequence.” – World Socialist Web Site Feb 2, 2024 Full Review The Present (2020) EDIT “The short film treats the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, focusing on the brutal checkpoint system.” – World Socialist Web Site Nov 2, 2023 Full Review El Conde (2023) 83% EDIT “Chilean director Pablo Larraín ... has made a horror-satire, the award-winning El Conde (The Count), which imagines Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire. It is a complicated, dark, disturbing film about fascism, bourgeois corruption and counterrevolution.” – World Socialist Web Site Nov 2, 2023 Full Review Barbie (2023) 88% EDIT “Barbie is strained and smug without much wit. One should bear in mind that Mattel, with revenue of $42 billion in 2022, partnered with Warner Bros. on the making of the movie. ” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 29, 2023 Full Review
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