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MaryAnn Johanson
Tomatometer-approved critic
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.
London and New York City
http://www.flickfilosopher.com
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Maestro (2023) |
Oh, frabjous film! Bradley Cooper’s astonishing high-wire act feels classic and modern at the same time: immersive and impressionistic, breathtakingly bold. A kick in the pants to mainstream cinema. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Godzilla Minus One (2023) |
The king of all monsters gets a period-piece reboot, and it’s the closest the series has gotten since to the sincere, unironic horrors of the 1954 original. No comfy escape from terrible reality here. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Nov 30, 2023
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Dream Scenario (2023) |
Nicolas Cage is comedic in a dry, subtle, nakedly painful way, playing with his ‘Cage rage’ persona; his performance is profoundly moving. I only wish the film was more deserving of what he’s doing. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Nov 26, 2023
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Trolls Band Together (2023) |
There is gentle nonstop chaos in the trippy candy-colored assault. Genuinely good-natured, sweet without being sappy, more strange (in a good way) than kids’ movies usually are, and hard to dislike. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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When Evil Lurks (2023) |
The visceral <i>meatiness</i> of this demonic-possession–infectious-zombie combo hits like a blow. The social and political context for the grotesquerie is even more appalling, and so very pertinent. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 28, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) |
A great American filmmaker on a memory-holed chapter of American history at the intersection of colonialism and toxic masculinity. Massive, epic, and essential. Scorches the earth of our complacency. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 23, 2023
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Possessed (2000) |
[S]upports the notion that the truth is usually duller than fiction, and needs to be gussied up a little to make it more dramatic. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 19, 2023
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Foe (2023) |
The young cast is mesmerizing, but all this dusty dystopia has is vibes and vague metaphors. It only just barely touches on the potential of its science-fiction ideas to explore the human condition. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 19, 2023
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Cat Person (2023) |
The cringe of modern relationships stinks up this antiromance. Its bald truths, all but ignored in pop culture, about how women navigate romantic and sexual relationships with men, demand to be heard. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 15, 2023
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The Creator (2023) |
Looks great, but the plot falls apart if you poke it and makes no attempt to grapple with AI’s potential. Instead it renders its robot people as a racialized Other in a clunky metaphor for bigotry. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Brother (2022) |
A pall of dread, of terrible suspense, hangs over this powerfully empathetic drama about what it means to be a Black man navigating a racist world. Beautifully performed and structurally intriguing. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Sep 27, 2023
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My Animal (2023) |
A mysterious, mournful film about proscribed teenaged-girlhood and feral female sexuality. Theres nothing entirely original here, but what it has to say, it says with enormous confidence and panache. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Sep 10, 2023
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The Dive (2023) |
Intermittent moments of fleeting suspense punctuate literal and figurative murkiness (I gave up trying to figure out what was going on) as it flails around trying to pad itself out to feature length. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Sep 10, 2023
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Scrapper (2023) |
A singular portrait of a girl full of verve and personality. An astonishing feature debut from Charlotte Regan, with a film as cheeky and imaginative, as pleasantly messy and chaotic, as its heroine. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 30, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
With human paradoxes at its nucleus, this is a riveting portrait, both intimate and epic, of the self-involved men who think they make the world go round... and too often, tragically, do. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 24, 2023
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Revoir Paris (2022) |
A deeply humane, delicately constructed journey through trauma and recovery that cuts like a knife and soothes like a hug, somehow, miraculously, managing both bundles of feeling at the same time. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 15, 2023
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Sympathy for the Devil (2023) |
Rote cat-and-mouse thriller spins its wheels getting somewhere obvious, just so wild-eyed Nic Cage can cartoonish Rage again. Look, the actor has found his schtick, and he’s sticking with it, okay? - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jul 30, 2023
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Mavka: The Forest Song (2023) |
Traditional folk music and beautifully animated mythic motifs may be rightfully validating for homegrown Ukrainian audiences, but there’s little else beyond that novelty to capture others’ imagination. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jul 28, 2023
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What's Love Got to Do with It? (2022) |
Lily James and Shazad Latif? Delightful, even when they’re not together and sparking. No surprise where they’re going, but this amiable rom-com gets them there with genuine smarts and real sentiment. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted May 03, 2023
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Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse (2020) |
This is a riveting experience, and occasionally a horrific one... But the truest horror of this film is its highlighting of the human tendency to embrace a denial of indisputable reality. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 26, 2023
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Renfield (2023) |
Nicholas Hoult is lovely. Hammy Nicolas Cage is amusing. But everyone in this movie is in a different movie; the tonal mismatches are baffling. Was it the first draft of this script that was greenlit? - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 14, 2023
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Rare Objects (2023) |
It’s overstuffed and often jarring. But it’s also honest and unassuming, never insipid or sentimental, with a rough power, a generous spirit, and performances that are warm, wise, and perceptive. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 13, 2023
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The Pope's Exorcist (2023) |
More of the same old religious-horror hoohah, plus Russell Crowe hamming it up, complete with terrible Italian accent. Its only twist on the usual exorcist-movie nonsense is genuinely pretty appalling. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 12, 2023
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) |
A heist drama, incendiary and intense, with planetary stakes. These young people are desperate, with nothing to lose, and everyone older than them made them this way. Nihilism is their only optimism. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 07, 2023
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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) |
A high-fantasy action comedy of tedious slapstick and obvious punchlines you scry the instant a wannabe medieval wag opens their mouth. It’s all borderline incoherent, sketched in cheap-looking CGI. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Apr 02, 2023
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65 (2023) |
Adam Driver’s intensely focused, utterly unironic performance is the only saving grace of this movie of few ideas and little suspense, mystery, or excitement. There aren’t even that many dinosaurs. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Full Time (2021) |
This relentless, heart-in-your-throat, ticking-clock thriller about precarious single-motherhood could not be more timely or more intimate. As real, and as recognizably stressful, as the genre gets. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
There is only one thing worse than an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a twist ending. And that is one without a twist ending. Feels like a faith-based movie trying to sneak in under a disingenuous wire. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Feb 26, 2023
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Blue Jean (2022) |
A powerful, necessary film, deeply humane and sympathetic, ugly-beautiful in its panic, full of dread and bad behavior. We feel every iota of Jean’s anxiety at closeted life in the homophobic 1980s. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Feb 17, 2023
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Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) |
Do you find Channing Tatum dance-grinding appealing? There’s not much of that here. There’s just the tedious grinding of dragging out yet another sequel in the face of diminishing franchise returns. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Feb 12, 2023
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Plane (2023) |
Entertainingly ridiculous? Or ridiculously entertaining? The slick of wild nonsense slapped over an uninspired undercoat is enjoyable enough while you’re onboard, and then it’s instantly forgettable. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jan 29, 2023
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A Man Called Otto (2022) |
With cowardly mildness, this white-bread mush misuses its star’s likability. Tom Hanks trying to be grumpy yet endearing has the opposite impact. He’s somehow less endearing than he’s been before. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (2022) |
The crisp, congenial charms of this intimate exploration of a decades-long working partnership overlay an unsentimental elegy for an era in journalism and publishing that has all but disappeared. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jan 07, 2023
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Violent Night (2022) |
Many movies have attempted to replicate the festive insouciant brutality of <i>Die Hard</i>. No movie has come closer to this lofty goal than this dementedly delicious nightmare before Christmas. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Dec 24, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
The filmmaking craft may be (mostly) astonishing. But the craft must always — <i>always</i> — be in aid of a compelling story populated by compelling characters... and that’s not so much the case here. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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Blackbird (2022) |
Long rumored — long threatened? — writer-director-producer-star Flatley’s self-financed pabulum opus is baffling and hilariously awful. It exists only because an incredibly rich man has money to burn. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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Beast (2022) |
Idris Elba fights a lion. This is what we are promised and this is what we get. The purity is sort of beautiful. But is it a failure of the movie, or a success, that it treats such nonsense earnestly? - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Sep 01, 2022
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Black Mail (2022) |
Limp thriller is both overly earnest and naively preposterous. A mess of retro ideas about marriage and men, with a protagonist who lacks agency. There’s no suspense but plenty of misplaced moralizing. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 27, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
There are delicious popcorn-movie vibes and horrors galore, both funny-suspenseful and stone-cold bone-chilling. But most intriguing is the twistiness of how the movie grapples with its own existence. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 26, 2022
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Orphan: First Kill (2022) |
The rare sequel better than the original, but that’s not saying much. Takes too long to get to its surprises, its adult star is unconvincing as a child, and its minimal cleverness feels like a cheat. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 17, 2022
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Eiffel (2021) |
Comfortably unchallenging French romantic drama, though it does Freudian-slip into implying that the engineer was only inspired to erect his soaring tower when an old flame reawakened his, er, heart. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 17, 2022
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The Princess (2022) |
A portrait of Diana’s depiction in the press that is incendiary, incisive, and transfixing. A litany of horror, in retrospect, and an incredibly valuable look at how public stories are shaped by media. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 11, 2022
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Wild Men (2021) |
This Danish black comedy is a meandering exploration of masculinity in the 21st century, and though it’s more miss than hit, it’s charming and bittersweetly heartfelt in its bumbling and bungling. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 10, 2022
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Bullet Train (2022) |
The cast is, on paper, terrific, but there’s nothing engaging in their bloody savagery. A misfire of a supposed action comedy, this mind-numbing mess is by turns grating, tedious, and infuriating. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Aug 06, 2022
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Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) |
This 60-year-old story of pursuing a dream with resolute kindness could not feel more fresh in its knowing class clash. Lesley Manville is an absolute treasure, her command of comedic pathos supreme. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jul 29, 2022
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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) |
Full of honesty and humanity, utterly lacking in shame over a basic human need, the female experience of which is almost universally ignored onscreen. Light, funny, diverting. So why was I bawling? - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jul 01, 2022
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The Book Keepers (2022) |
A book is born; its author dies. Her husband takes up her work in a process of gentle, active mourning. Honest and hopeful, this journey through grief is beautifully structured for maximum poignance. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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Nude Tuesday (2022) |
The wacky-yet-heartfelt comedy just about works; the gibberish dialogue, not so much. But this could be the makings of a crowdsourced cult fave, if playful viewers end up creating their own subtitles. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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Men (2022) |
A ‘critique’ of misogyny that is outright misogynist, even before it goes down a gorefest rabbit hole of infuriating contempt for women. What the hell is going on with this would-be-mythic mishmash? - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jun 10, 2022
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
One of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. It is impossibly small, and emotionally immense, full of the most bittersweet of pathos that the coming-of-age genre offers. A treasure, and a gift. - Flick Filosopher
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| Posted Jun 05, 2022
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