Movie review by Greg Carlson Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s narrative fiction feature debut “All We Imagine as Light” is, among other things, a cinematic consideration of place. The movie begins but does not end in Mumbai, and the viewer hears multiple languages spoken throughout the deceptively simple and seductive story. Like Varda’s Paris in “Cléo […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn’s previous feature, “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” was a dizzy, snarky riff on the Old Dark House motif and one of 2022’s most slept-on cinematic treats. Now, with a major Oscar-winning star in Nicole Kidman and a high-visibility Christmas Day release, the director – who also wrote the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Essential viewing for cinephiles of any generation, director David Hinton’s engrossing documentary “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger” celebrates one of cinema’s most fruitful partnerships. Hosted by on-screen narrator Martin Scorsese, whose personal relationship with Powell is addressed in the film, “Made in England” is a heartfelt […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Brady Corbet, the American screen actor turned auteur, is only 36 years old. He doesn’t enjoy the same level of fan adoration that accompanies the projects of Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and the like, but one imagines that the filmmaker hopes that his third feature film could […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson For the better part of a decade, filmmaker Robert Eggers has worked toward the realization of an adaptation of “Nosferatu,” the genre-defining horror masterpiece originally brought to the screen by F. W. Murnau in 1922. The wait, as it turns out, has been well worth it. Murnau’s German Expressionist creepshow, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The Oscar-winning writer-director Andrea Arnold returns to scripted, feature-length fiction with the quintessentially Arnoldian “Bird,” an unsettling coming-of-age tale set in the hard-edged environs of northern Kent. Arnold’s own personal history, which includes teenage parents and a council estate residency during childhood, has previously inspired the autobiographical impulse in her […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson For many years, Mark Cousins has been one of the most ambitious chroniclers of movie culture. The indefatigable documentarian might be best known for his 2011 project “The Story of Film: An Odyssey.” That 930-minute epic was programmed in America on Turner Classic Movies and is now available on physical […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Certain to be included on a sizable number of 2024 best-of lists, Johan Grimonprez’s striking “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is essential viewing for political history and jazz music aficionados. The ambitious essay-style documentary experience, clocking in at a hefty but never dull 150 minutes, connects the dots linking the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner “Anora” is one of the year’s best. Fans of the formidable filmmaker might not claim that the beautifully crafted melodrama, which can turn on a dime between outrageous comic farce and heartbreaking humanist plea, is necessarily a better movie than “The Florida Project,” but “Anora” […]