Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Critics list

MaryAnn Johanson

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

MaryAnn Johanson launched her popular and respected FlickFilosopher.com in 1997, making it one of the oldest and longest-running film criticism sites. Her reviews are syndicated across a variety of US alt-weekly newspapers; other credits include Indiewire, PBS's Independent Lens blog, Film Threat, and Film4.com. She is an executive member of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (which awards the Webbys), one of only a few film critics among that organization. She regularly appears on the BBC World Service's 'The Arts Hour' as a cultural commentator, and has served as a jury member at Sheffield Doc/Fest, Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, and Edinburgh Film Festival.

Location:

London and New York City

Official Website:

http://www.flickfilosopher.com

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) 92% 4/5 EDIT “Rian Johnson’s third outing with droll detective Benoit Blanc, perhaps the most memorable original new movie character in decades, is a grimly funny gothic romp through modern hot-button Americana.” – Flick Filosopher Nov 26, 2025 Full Review Bugonia (2025) 88% 4.5/5 EDIT “Grimly hilarious, this mashup of black comedy, social commentary, suspense, and horror is sharp and stinging, with a haunting gut punch of a finale... and it’s Yorgos Lanthimos’s most accessible film yet.” – Flick Filosopher Oct 24, 2025 Full Review Good Boy (2025) 90% 4.5/5 EDIT “A haunted house movie from the dog’s perspective. No cheap gimmick but an absolute marvel, strikingly original and deeply affecting. An interspecies love story without a lick of phony sentimentality.” – Flick Filosopher Sep 30, 2025 Full Review The Cut (2024) 69% 4/5 EDIT “A real aspect of boxing — dangerously fast weight loss — sports films have ignored becomes body horror we have not seen before. The genre’s motivational clichés get twisted, nastily and poignantly.” – Flick Filosopher Sep 26, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% 5/5 EDIT “Brash, chaotic, full of bleak humor and bitter irony. With blockbuster vibes over an anarchic indie heart, it’s both earnest and winking. Outstanding in-flight entertainment for our societal freefall.” – Flick Filosopher Sep 25, 2025 Full Review Sew Torn (2024) 95% 3/5 EDIT “The quirks of this slightly fantastical black-comedy crime thriller are many, varied, and messily disjointed. But there’s a delicious oddness to its unpredictability and its spin on familiar tropes.” – Flick Filosopher Jun 20, 2025 Full Review Black Bag (2025) 96% 5/5 EDIT “Smart, sophisticated spy-versus-spy nonsense makes for a perfect little cinematic contraption. Tense and tricksy, but much more deliciously, these are espionage mind games with a sexy screwball vibe.” – Flick Filosopher Jun 11, 2025 Full Review Fountain of Youth (2025) 35% 2/5 EDIT “Hollywood has lost the ability to buckle swash. Guy Ritchie, shamelessly stealing from Indiana Jones, gives us a charmless treasure hunt that feels honed by corporate focus groups and cinematic SEO.” – Flick Filosopher Jun 6, 2025 Full Review Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) 92% 2.5/5 EDIT “The dorm-room philosophy of the 25-year-old series is still pondering how wild it is that we all die, how fragile our meatbag bodies are. Now with gory dismemberments and squishy impalements in IMAX!” – Flick Filosopher May 20, 2025 Full Review Sinners (2025) 97% 5/5 EDIT “Wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.” – Flick Filosopher May 20, 2025 Full Review Superboys of Malegaon (2024) 87% 3.5/5 EDIT “Gentle, charming dramedy about pals in middle-of-nowhere India making amateur movies. The giddy glee in this winsome portrait of geeky passion and enduring friendship is all-around infectious.” – Flick Filosopher Mar 7, 2025 Full Review When I'm Ready (2025) 2.5/5 EDIT “Pretty young people are sad about the end of everything, but there’s no urgency and little emotional authenticity to any of it. We’ve seen this before, pulled off with far more affecting feeling.” – Flick Filosopher Feb 27, 2025 Full Review The Apprentice (2024) 82% 5/5 EDIT “A portrait of a weak man, humorless and friendless, desperate to be liked, desperate to be seen as someone who *matters*. Sebastian Stan’s brilliantly disgusting Trump is horrifically riveting.” – Flick Filosopher Feb 13, 2025 Full Review Paddington in Peru (2024) 93% 2.5/5 EDIT “Colorful but flattened and flimsy, which really grates next to how abundantly, uniquely original the first two movies are. Suffers greatly from the lack of their deft whimsy. It’s, well, bearly there.” – Flick Filosopher Feb 13, 2025 Full Review The Brutalist (2024) 93% 5/5 EDIT “Stark and unsentimental, as stubborn and as challenging as its protagonist, and as monumental as his works. Adrien Brody’s performance is extraordinary, full of flinty anger and palpable melancholy.” – Flick Filosopher Jan 15, 2025 Full Review Nightbitch (2024) 60% 3/5 EDIT “Replaces the novel’s rage with gentle comedy, biting its tongue and undercutting its protagonist. Still, mundane truths about women’s realities that rarely get public airings are on welcome display.” – Flick Filosopher Dec 4, 2024 Full Review Red One (2024) 30% 1/5 EDIT “Unfunny action comedy can’t even pull off sloppy Yuletide kitsch. The anti-chemistry among its likable stars is ‘bested’ only by the ugly CGI. Have some light festive violence — you know, for kids!” – Flick Filosopher Nov 10, 2024 Full Review Blitz (2024) 81% EDIT “Picaresque childhood misadventures sketch vibrant WWII London. A movie of brutal randomness, feral intensity, and ferocious intimacy. Wildly human, artistically masterful, and completely magnificent.” – Flick Filosopher Nov 3, 2024 Full Review Your Monster (2024) 79% 5/5 EDIT “Sure, the humor may be bitter, the horror may be audacious, and the overriding genre may be ‘anti-romance.’ But this hugely original, grimly delightful howl of feminine rage is actually kinda sweet.” – Flick Filosopher Oct 23, 2024 Full Review Lee (2023) 68% 4.5/5 EDIT “It barely scratches the surface of the enormous audacity of WWII photographer Lee Miller, but still this is an important movie. It’s also joyous filmmaking, with terrific performances all around.” – Flick Filosopher Sep 25, 2024 Full Review Robot Dreams (2023) 98% 5/5 EDIT “Immerse yourself in pure unalloyed joy with a sweet, deceptively simple carbon-silicon platonic romance. Even the poignant bittersweetness of this emotional roller coaster is affirming and uplifting.” – Flick Filosopher Aug 6, 2024 Full Review Twisters (2024) 75% 2.5/5 EDIT “Hooray for Glen Powell’s star rising, but this absurdly coy movie — is it a sequel? a remake? — is a cowardly, reckless missed opportunity: it’s deeply baffling that it omits any hint of global warming.” – Flick Filosopher Aug 5, 2024 Full Review Nancy Drew -- Reporter (1939) 100% EDIT “One of the Warner Bros short features, aimed at young audiences, about the teen-girl detective’s adventures, though she’s cast as a rather interfering little brat. Still, it’s good clean fun for kids.” – Flick Filosopher Jul 9, 2024 Full Review Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out (1989) EDIT “Part Jules Verne, part Chuck Jones, A Grand Day Out gives Wallace and Gromit a foil in the strange little whatchamathingie coin-op machine they encounter on the Moon...” – Flick Filosopher Jul 8, 2024 Full Review Kinds of Kindness (2024) 71% 5/5 EDIT “A mad monstrosity of a movie: absurdist, enigmatic, perverse. Lanthimos’s typical grotesque humor is on full display. Yay for a film that actually attempts to capture how insane the world is today?” – Flick Filosopher Jun 24, 2024 Full Review
No Reviews Yet
Load More