Movie review by Greg Carlson As a teenage coming-of-age comedy, “Bend It Like Beckham” is sturdy and reliable, with a conclusion so foreseeable you will likely telegraph it from the opening scenes. Tried and true tropes are firmly in place: a wedding, a love triangle, a passion for something your parents just don’t understand, and […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson It’s easy, sometimes, to forget that David Gordon Green is still a young man in his late 20s. “All the Real Girls” is only his second feature, following the haunting “George Washington,” but it resonates with a careful, unhurried patience that few filmmakers of Green’s generation are likely to be […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Laurel Canyon” could have been a really good movie.  Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko, whose “High Art” covered some of the same thematic territory, has the right cast, the right setting, and the right crew – especially in cinematographer Wally Pfister, nearly as masterful here as he was in “Insomnia.”  The problem […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The good news is that the weakest thing about “X2: X-Men United” is its limp title, another one of those shorthand sequel acronyms bestowed apparently for the benefit of the attention-span challenged or the near-illiterate (see: “T2,” “T3,” MiB 2,” MI:2,” etc.).  Marquee notwithstanding, director Bryan Singer proved the last […]