Movie review by Greg Carlson Going into the latest edition of the Sundance Film Festival, Don Hertzfeldt captured the record for most movies screened in competition by a single filmmaker in the festival’s history. And with his win for Short Film Grand Jury Prize, “World of Tomorrow” makes Hertzfeldt the only artist to have collected […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Fan studies scholars should salivate over Neil Berkeley’s portrait of writer/performer Dan Harmon, the self-proclaimed mayor of “Harmontown,” the popular podcast he hosts. Berkeley’s documentary bears the same name as Harmon’s loquacious, therapeutic circus, and hardcore devotees will already be familiar with the details of that freewheeling, improvisational, mental odyssey […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Paul Thomas Anderson’s future cult film “Inherent Vice” is soft-boiled detective fiction. Bleary-eyed and hair-tousled, the movie is a pungent, shambling, meandering, and thoroughly hilarious shaggy dog story with a non-agenda traceable directly to the likes of Howard Hawks’ adaptation of “The Big Sleep” and its famous anecdote in which […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson While there is an abundance of hero worship on display in Amir Bar-Lev’s raw and riveting documentary “Happy Valley,” the most courageous figure to emerge from the wreckage and devastation caused by the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State is Sandusky’s adopted son Matt. For any number of possible reasons, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Earning accolades for its stylish design on a modest budget, its reliance on character and storytelling instead of CGI, and its reverence for several legendary genre hallmarks, Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook,” like its namesake ghoulie, can be tough to banish from your head. Tracing the downward spiral of a struggling […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Jeremy Saulnier contributes a worthwhile addition to the family revenge thriller with “Blue Ruin,” a sharp livewire that transcends both its modest budget and the familiar expectations of the genre through the filmmaker’s keen intellectual investments. The umpteenth story to track the efforts of a driven protagonist en route to […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt continues to build her reputation as a storyteller of remarkable skill with “Night Moves,” a pressure cooker of a movie that observes the actions of a trio of radical environmental activists who plot to blow up a dam in the Pacific Northwest. Like her recent work, including […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Warsaw-born, UK-based Pawel Pawlikowski delivers one of the year’s most rewarding cinematic experiences in “Ida,” a stark, monochromatic treasure set in Poland in 1962. Quiet, introspective, and deliberate on the outside, the movie’s interior life is by contrast filled with the most tumultuous emotional upheaval imaginable. Raised by nuns and […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Late in writer-director Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature “Whiplash,” monstrous music teacher Terence Fletcher states, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.” By this point, the viewer will have formed a few troubled thoughts about Fletcher, who berates and belittles his students in much […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman” gives Michael Keaton the “Being John Malkovich” treatment in a messy, noisy backstage drama enamored of its own ruminations about art and artifice, celebrity worship, self-respect, narcissism and several dozen additional Big Ideas. In 2000, “Amores perros,” the first installment of Inarritu’s “death trilogy,” divided audiences, […]