Movie review by Greg Carlson Tim Wardle’s documentary “Three Identical Strangers” shares the seemingly impossible tale of brothers Eddy Galland, David Kellman, and Bobby Shafran, separated-at-birth triplets who discovered one another as young adults in 1980. Recipient of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling shortly after its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Making his feature directorial debut, “The Grudge” writer Stephen Susco scares up a handful of unnerving images and grim thoughts in “Unfriended: Dark Web,” a standalone follow-up to the incredibly profitable 2014 Blumhouse film. Like the first “Unfriended,” “Dark Web” was produced at a cost of roughly one million dollars, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Brett Haley follows “The Hero” with another intimate and small-scale drama that touches on love and loss, looking back and moving forward. Nick Offerman, who provided memorable support in “The Hero” as Sam Elliott’s drug connection, assumes lead duties as Brooklyn record store proprietor Frank Fisher. Coming to grips with […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The career of legendary Hollywood iconoclast Hal Ashby is given a thorough assessment in “Hal,” one of this year’s several top-notch biographical documentaries and an absolute must-see for cinephiles. Making her feature debut as director, Amy Scott — whose own background as an editor closely aligns her with obsessive cutter […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarin remember their late grandmother in “306 Hollywood,” an appealing mixture of nonfiction and magical realism the filmmakers have dubbed “normalized magic.” Premiering in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, the film will be broadcast as part of the 31st season of public television’s “POV” […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Boots Riley hallucinates a wildly funny feature debut with “Sorry to Bother You,” a sharp-fanged social satire that mashes up the innovative handmade aesthetics of Michel Gondry with the fierce truth-to-power consciousness of Spike Lee. As uneven as it is addictively watchable, the movie caroms from sharply on-point to murkily […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Filmmaker Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace,” based on Peter Rock’s novel “My Abandonment,” demonstrates some spiritual and stylistic kinship with the director’s tremendous “Winter’s Bone,” but the new film stakes out the emotionally intense territory shared by a father and his daughter living off the grid as a means of […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Scaring up early buzz as a premiere in the Midnight section of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” is the horror film of the year. Anchored by the vital performance of Toni Collette as grieving, disintegrating mother Annie Graham — arguably the actor’s career-best work — the movie’s […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Writer-director Chloe Zhao’s sophomore feature “The Rider” cements her status as one of contemporary filmmaking’s most promising voices. A carefully curated blend of fact and fiction, the movie focuses on the aftermath of a traumatic head injury suffered by a young Sioux rodeo cowboy. Played by Brady Jandreau, the fictional […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In a bit of fortuitous timing, Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville turns his attention to public television superstar Fred Rogers, an almost universally beloved figure whose unwavering message of peace, friendship, love and kindness contrasts diametrically with today’s bullying tone of undignified late-night tweets issuing from a certain well-covered account. One […]