All posts in category Movie reviews

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

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 […]

The Brutalist

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 […]

Nosferatu

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, […]

Bird

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 […]

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock

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 […]

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat

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 […]

Anora

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” […]

Lee

Movie review by Greg Carlson The brilliant cinematographer Ellen Kuras makes her narrative feature directorial debut with the long-gestating biopic “Lee.” Reuniting with Kate Winslet, with whom she worked on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Kuras explores the career highlights of model turned World War II photographer Lee Miller, whose images of Buchenwald and […]

Your Monster

Movie review by Greg Carlson Caroline Lindy expands her short film “Your Monster” to feature length with mixed results. The movie premiered in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival in January, but makes for a thematically appropriate Halloween season experience for romantics and theater kids seeking a not-too-scary fantasy. Despite the somewhat exaggerated […]

We Live in Time

Movie review by Greg Carlson The unsurprising reality that director John Crowley offers absolutely nothing new should not – and will not – deter fans of the weepie from purchasing tickets to “We Live in Time.” The opportunity to see the impossibly appealing domesticity and sparking chemistry of Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a […]