SPY – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 MaryAnn Johanson 0 Comments spy

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Director Paul Feig has made some very bad movies with Melissa McCarthy. The Heat and Bridesmaids were popular, this is true, but they were also cruel and unforgivably unfair to the women they were about. But now, Feig — also taking on the screenwriting task — has made a movie that allows McCarthy to be her own delightful self without asking us to laugh at her. We laugh with McCarthy, sure, and that’s fine. And in Spy, we laugh with her while also commiserating with her, because this sneakily subversive movie confronts head-on issues of women’s confidence (or lack thereof) and men’s arrogance (and fear!) that so many movies, including Heat, dare not touch, though they sometimes pretend to. Read more>>

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MaryAnn Johanson

MaryAnn Johanson is a freelance writer on film, TV, DVD, and pop culture from New York City and now based in London. She is the webmaster and sole critic at FlickFilosopher.com, which debuted in 1997 and is now one of the most popular, most respected, and longest-running movie-related sites on the Internet. Her film reviews also appear in a variety of alternative-weekly newspapers across the U.S. Johanson is one of only a few film critics who is a member of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (the Webby organization), an invitation-only, 500-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities. She is also a member of the Online Film Critics Society. She has appeared as a cultural commentator on BBC Radio, LBC-London, and on local radio programs across North America, and she served as a judge at the first Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film Festival at the 2003 I-Con, the largest SF convention on the East Coast. She is the author of The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride, and is an award-winning screenwriter. Read Johanson's recent articles below. For her AWFJ.org archive, type "MaryAnn Johanson" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).