All posts for the month February, 2008

Be Kind Rewind

Movie review by Greg Carlson Michel Gondry, the music video maestro who champions a handmade, do-it-yourself craftiness in the process of making his films, might never top “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” which has thus far been the strongest realization of his work as a director and Charlie Kaufman’s as a screenwriter. Sadly, Kaufman […]

Jumper

Movie review by Greg Carlson Any person hoping that director Doug Liman would recapture some of the pulse-quickening glory of his past successes should steer clear of “Jumper,” a disappointing and empty-headed hybrid of action and science fiction with no reverence for the strongest concerns of either genre. Based on the 1992 novel of the […]

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Movie review by Greg Carlson Academy Award nominee Julian Schnabel makes films that often focus intensely on the trials of a reflective (some would say self-obsessed) male protagonist. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” adapted from French “Elle” editor Jean-Dominique Bauby’s 1997 memoir, follows Schnabel’s previous two features, “Basquiat” and “Before Night Falls,” in such […]

The Savages

Movie review by Greg Carlson Tamara Jenkins, whose semi-autobiographical debut feature “Slums of Beverly Hills” managed to wring some humor out of desperate living, attempts more of the same with “The Savages,” a blackly comic movie of the week with most of the melodrama and sentimentality left on the cutting room floor. This is not […]