Movie review by Greg Carlson Celine Song’s thrilling debut “Past Lives” was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. It was one of the most memorable and rewarding films of 2023. The writer-director’s sophomore effort “Materialists” is another triangle-based romance. “Materialists” centers on a successful NYC matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson. Johnson’s Lucy […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Wes Anderson’s twelfth full-length feature, “The Phoenician Scheme,” sees the idiosyncratic auteur pull back from the elaborate storytelling scaffolding and structures of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Asteroid City,” movies that dazzled viewers with metanarrative gymnastics nesting stories inside stories. Even so, “The Phoenician Scheme” bears enough of the familiar […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The writing/directing partnership of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck has to be one of the most curious cases of crazy connect-the-dots career moves in recent cinema. From short documentaries and safe-sex content for the Centers for Disease Control to television work, Boden and Fleck broke through in 2006 with the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Filmmaker Antonella Sudasassi Furniss constructs an engaging sophomore feature with “Memories of a Burning Body,” selected by Costa Rica to be entered for consideration as a possible Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film. While the movie would not go on to make the final roster of Academy Award hopefuls, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In a Sundance profile for feature debut “The Ugly Stepsister,” which opened the festival’s 2025 Midnight section, filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt described growing up “in a tiny village above the Arctic Circle on the rough coast of northern Norway” where her parents initially chose books over movies. By her early teens, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Of the many photographs that help tell the story “I Know Catherine, the Log Lady,” the one of David Lynch dressed as FBI Regional Bureau Chief (and later Deputy Director) Gordon Cole saying something amusing to a laughing, slightly out of focus Catherine E. Coulson is my favorite. Director Richard […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Anchored by the dependable Florence Pugh, “Thunderbolts*” easily tops “Captain America: Brave New World” to make it the most satisfying MCU movie of 2025 – so far. The asterisk alludes to an alternative title that appears onscreen as one of several end-credits revelations, but an equally welcome surprise is the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Toronto-based filmmaker Alison Duke shines a light on a pioneering Jamaican recording artist and her most famous and durable song in the documentary feature “Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story.” Duke’s movie, which premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, is a must-see for music fans, but the big personality […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Ryan Coogler goes big and bold with “Sinners,” a sweaty, bloody vampire movie set in 1932. The filmmaker stuffs this universe with enough ideas to serve a limited-series season of episodic television, but the feature format ultimately suits something that brings together Coogler’s large canvas experiences at the helm of […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Given the volume of existing media material on the topic, longtime admirers of legendary documentarian Errol Morris might wonder why he would elect to become the umpteenth person to cover the horrific crimes of the Manson Family. Whether or not the fee paid to Morris by Netflix factored into the […]