ROTTEN TOMATOES: MaryAnn Johanson

Official Websites:
flickfilosopher.com

MARYANN JOHANSON

Agrees with the Tomatometer 77% 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: 2836
Total QuickRatings: 3

Location: New York City

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh	Fresh 70%	The Road (2009)	" [T]ruly great in the classical sense of the word, as grand as our most terrible fears and as wild as our most outlandish hopes and as intimate as being alive can be." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 24, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 28%	Ninja Assassin (2009)	" [A] bloody concoction of slasher movie blended with martial arts and a small helping of faux Eastern philosophy..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 24, 2009
N/A	N/A	Everybody's Fine (2009)	" Interview with writer-director Kirk Jones." — AWFJ Women on Film INTERVIEW Posted Nov 23, 2009
Fresh	N/A	The Golden Age of Television (2009)	" As pure drama, these are still fascinating to watch, especially to see the early work of some now very famous names. But as a look at what TV was doing half a century ago, it's riveting." — Flick Filosopher DVD REVIEW Posted Nov 23, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 16%	Planet 51 (2009)	" Planet 51 isn't terrible, just bland and predictable as a story, though at least the humor that's tacked onto it is gentle and unassuming..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 20, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 30%	The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)	" *Bella Cullen. Mrs. Edward Cullen. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Cullen. Ms. Bella Cullen. Mrs. Jacob Black. Jacob and Bella Black. Mrs. Bella Black. Ms. Bella Swan Black. Mrs. Bella Swan Cullen." — Flick Filosopher* Posted Nov 19, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 92%	Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)	" [T]ouching and funny, and magically absurd and at the same time pointedly real... genius..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 18, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 91%	Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009)	" [H]arrowing, painful, heartbreaking, explicit... but nothing that we see here is unbelievable, unless one wants to deny the hell that some women go through..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 13, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 30%	Women in Trouble (2009)	" Apparently, in Gutierrez's mind, expanding the range of humanity available to women on film means they can be porn stars or prostitutes...and they can be catastrophically dumb..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 13, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 74%	Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)	" [T]his difficult, uncomfortable film... deconstructs the notion of what 'evil' is... Subtle and sharp in how it turns over notions of revenge and grief, forgiveness and empathy, compassion and understanding..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 12, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 38%	2012 (2009)	" *Emmerich wasn't content to merely make the biggest disaster movie ever: he had to make every* disaster movie ever... [I]t's like something Ed Wood would have made if he had a budget...*" — Flick Filosopher* Posted Nov 12, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 47%	The Box (2009)	" [T]he ambition of the movie makes it sort of intriguing, too, even if it fails -- spectacularly -- in the end..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 9, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 59%	Pirate Radio (2009)	" [A] mess of a misbegotten would-be comedy... [T]here's not much story there at all, just some episodic anecdotes better suited to a sitcom..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 9, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 54%	The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)	" [C]heeky, baffled madness... [but] there is no doubt that the yearning and the questioning and the skepticism it all encapsulates about modern masculinity is achingly authentic..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 6, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 55%	Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009)	" Zemeckis... appears to have given up making fantasies for grownups in favor of making theme-park attractions designed to do nothing more than shut the kiddies up for 90 minutes..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 6, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 18%	The Fourth Kind (2009)	" *This is the same kind of put-on as the low-budget phenomenon Paranormal Activity. Except it's far more effective (at least at first)." — Flick Filosopher* Posted Nov 5, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 65%	Coco Before Chanel (2009)	" *[T]here's a anesthetized feel to this sedate biopic that suggests a wrongheadedness in its focus: maybe the more interesting part of her life was after* she became the icon of fashion...*" — Flick Filosopher* Posted Nov 3, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 26%	Motherhood (2009)	" In a few brief moments, Thurman's Eliza springs to life... but it's not Thurman's fault that those moments are few and far between." — Flick Filosopher Posted Nov 2, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 22%	The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)	" [R]iotously awful and simultaneously vile, this orgy of sexualized violence with no point except to give itself something to jerk off to..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 30, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 47%	Ong Bak 2 (2009)	" The action bits make you feel like you've had pure adrenaline pumped into you, but the attention to artistic detail... is like something you'd expect from a Hollywood epic..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 29, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 80%	Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)	" [F]orgeteth thou the unpleasant autopsy and toxicology reports. Seeth how Michael was a man and yet not a man, a man and yet a seraph of spirit and light and moonwalking." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 28, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 20%	Amelia (2009)	" [A] quiet, reflective film... Earhart is not an icon or a symbol: she's a human being... [T]he assumption of autonomy... is a luxury rarely accorded to women in our pop culture, and it is wonderful to see here." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 23, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 38%	Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)	" It all feels very small and surprisingly indifferent to its own potential magic, like the pilot for a TV series that might find its groove in its second season but isn't anywhere near there yet." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 22, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 48%	Astro Boy (2009)	" It's creepy, and it's weird, and it's something like a mecha minstrel show, particularly in how the film pretends to a 'robots are people too' theme yet fails itself to treat them as such." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 22, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 83%	Paranormal Activity (2009)	" Does no one else see that the few genuinely creepy and original moments here are so few and far between that this would have been far more intriguing as a YouTube short...?" — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 21, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 93%	The Damned United (2009)	" [A]n absolutely thrilling story, one both hilarious and poignant, about a man who is downright classical in his flaws... Michael Sheen, who always has a hint something impish and elven about him, is absolutely perfect..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 20, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 69%	Paris (2009)	" [Y]ou probably cannot ever go wrong with a flick set in the City of Light and starring one of the most luminous actresses ever to grace the arthouse screen..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 19, 2009
N/A	Rotten 12%	Couples Retreat (2009)	" *Is Couples Retreat* a "chick flick"?*" — AWFJ Women on Film* MISCELLANEOUS Posted Oct 19, 2009
N/A	Rotten 26%	Motherhood (2009)	" Uma Thurman and Katherine Dieckmann on "chick flicks"" — AWFJ Women on Film INTERVIEW Posted Oct 19, 2009
N/A	Fresh 94%	An Education (2009)	" Nick Hornby on writing a female character..." — AWFJ Women on Film INTERVIEW Posted Oct 19, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 86%	A Serious Man (2009)	" [I]ronic but sincere. We could even call it postsnark... [T]his could be, attitudinally, the first movie of the second decade of the 21st century..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 19, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 70%	Where the Wild Things Are (2009)	" [V]ery much itself, confident and certain and no more and no less than what it needs to be, if the goal were merely to transfer Sendak to the big screen..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 16, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 23%	Law Abiding Citizen (2009)	" [E]mblematic of the unpleasant streak that runs through the American zeitgeist today... that we have to do away with... the rule of law and that pesky Constitution in order to 'save' America..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 15, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 94%	An Education (2009)	" Someone once said that perfect movies are boring and only flawed movies intriguing... And then along comes a movie like An Education, about which the number of things that are absolutely perfect is impossible to measure... and it's thrilling and ca" — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 9, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 12%	Couples Retreat (2009)	" *Maybe it's pointless to complain about the shocking lack of elegance to an instantly forgettable bit of multiplex fluff like Couples Retreat.* It's like complaining about the food at Applebee's...*" — Flick Filosopher* Posted Oct 8, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 56%	The Invention of Lying (2009)	" [T]rue uncomfortable brilliance... downright seditious... ask[s] probing questions about the lies that we, in our world, may be dealing with on a daily basis..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 2, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 89%	Zombieland (2009)	" [O]utrageously violent and outrageously funny... plays up what could be its most shocking moment with exactly the right blend of impudence and absurdity and tragi-comedy..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 1, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 82%	Whip It (2009)	" [W]orks within Hollywood conventions of storytelling to handily demonstrate that just because a tale is familiar doesn't mean it can't be fresh and funny and edgy, too..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 1, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 72%	The Boys Are Back (2009)	" [A] lovely reminder of what a cinematic treasure Owen is: his palpable charisma... works even better when we're already inclined to sympathize with him." — Flick Filosopher Posted Oct 1, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 22%	I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009)	" Tucker Max [is] a child. A toddler. A three-year-old screaming, "Poopie, poopie, POOPIE!" at the top of his lungs in the middle of the supermarket..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 25, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 83%	Bright Star (2009)	" It's not only the best possible ode to Keats' work, this lovely gentle poetic film, it's the best possible ode to Fanny, as well: If she made him feel the way this movie feels, that must have been a powerful love indeed." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 24, 2009
N/A	Fresh 83%	Bright Star (2009)	" Interview with Paul Schneider" — AWFJ Women on Film INTERVIEW Posted Sep 21, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 86%	The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009)	" This sprawling portrait of the Red Army Faction... is neither an apologetic for the anarchist gang nor a condemnation of it, but rather a fascinating exploration of the shift in the zeitgeist of that era..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 21, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 76%	The Informant! (2009)	" [A] potent satire on corporate malfeasance and a deliciously twisted -- half biting, half poignant -- portrait of the people do who corporate evil, with the added piquance of it being based on [a] true story..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 18, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 18%	Love Happens (2009)	" *I'd never have expected that the movie would be saved, just a little, from being complete bullsht by the presence of Aaron Eckhart.*" — Flick Filosopher* Posted Sep 18, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 45%	Jennifer's Body (2009)	" *It's as if everyone in Jennifer's Body* knows they're a character in Jennifer's Body: The New Movie From Badass Chick Screenwriter Diablo Cody...*" — Flick Filosopher* Posted Sep 17, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 85%	Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)	" [T]reat[s] the charming nonsense of food falling from the sky like weather with exactly the sort of bouyant nimbleness it deserves..." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 17, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 70%	My One and Only (2009)	" What could have been a maddening portrait of spoiled self-entitlement is, instead, a plucky tale... Zellweger creates a nice portrait of chin-keeping-up-erness combined with encroaching self-awareness...." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 14, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 6%	Whiteout (2009)	" Oh, the squandering! It's like setting a story on Mars and then pretending we're just out in the Arizona desert." — Flick Filosopher Posted Sep 10, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 95%	In the Loop (2009)	" *It's as if Jane Austen and Monty Python collaborated on an episode of The West Wing..." — Flick Filosopher* Posted Sep 8, 2009

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9/10	Ben-HurOffsite
81/100	Murphy's RomanceOffsite
75/100	Nikki - Wild Dog of the NorthOffsite
70/100	The Kennel Murder CaseOffsite
6/10	FootlooseOffsite
55/100	The Legend of LoboOffsite
45/100	ZachariahOffsite
3/10	From Here to EternityOffsite

9/10	BookWarsOffsite
9/10	Olive, the Other ReindeerOffsite
9/10	Kestrel's EyeOffsite
9/10	Cast AwayOffsite
9/10	The GiftOffsite
9/10	O Brother, Where Art Thou?Offsite
9/10	The House of MirthOffsite
9/10	The Emperor's New GrooveOffsite
9/10	1776Offsite
9/10	All About EveOffsite

MARYANN JOHANSON

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