Movie review by Greg Carlson Veteran director/art director/visual effects specialist Joe Johnston makes mincemeat of “The Wolfman,” his remake of the 1941 Universal horror classic that spawned numerous imitators and thousands of nightmares for generations of children who caught Halloween broadcasts on television. Johnston’s version eliminates suspense in favor of brutal shock, which assaults the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The steadfast Jeff Bridges appears in nearly every frame of “Crazy Heart,” carrying the movie on his sturdy shoulders and infusing it with just enough depth, charm, and dignity to transcend the familiarity of its oft-told story. First time feature director Scott Cooper also wrote the screenplay adapted from Thomas […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Spanish maestro Pedro Almodovar should easily win new converts to his cult of admirers with the ravishing “Broken Embraces,” a liquid bonbon of metafiction bearing many of the filmmaker’s hallmarks, including a superb performance by occasional muse Penelope Cruz. With few exceptions, most notably Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” Cruz […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” will draw some spectators solely on the morbid curiosity factor that director Terry Gilliam was in production when actor Heath Ledger died.  Gilliam, who continues to earn his reputation as one of the least fortunate filmmakers in the business, scrambled to salvage something worthwhile from […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Judging from photographs as well as the popular imagination, Emily Blunt’s beautiful neck is at least twice as long as Queen Victoria’s, but historical fidelity is not the first thing on the mind of filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee, whose “The Young Victoria” is an entertaining, sumptuous, and romantic confection.  Blunt has […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Arriving after a sporadically produced stage play and an unaired television pilot, “Youth in Revolt,” the Miguel Arteta adaptation of C.D. Payne’s comic coming-of-age writings is a film so wispy it almost blows away when you sigh from your theatre seat.  It is also often funny and generally entertaining.  Michael […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Something important went missing in the filmic translation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” by director John Hillcoat.  Hillcoat’s “The Proposition,” a smart, grueling Western set in 1880s Australia caught the eye of “The Road” producer Nick Wechsler, who imagined that the filmmaker could recapture the terrible beauty of Hillcoat’s […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson If Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” is one of the year’s most Bressonian films, then Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” is certainly its antithesis.  Manipulative, smug, and supremely confident of its own worth, “Up in the Air” is a movie of and for its time, a skittering commentary on economic […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In a recent interview with Maria Garcia in Film Journal International, director Jane Campion invoked the name of Robert Bresson, the colossus of unblinking austerity and scholarship of the soul, whose oeuvre has become a Rosetta Stone for generations of moviemakers.  Campion’s “Bright Star,” a love story based on the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Like many of Clint Eastwood’s recent films, “Invictus” takes its sweet time to arrive at a conclusion determined from the opening moments.  A glossy and superficial account of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa, the movie blends biopic with traditional sports genre elements, including lengthy sequences in which […]