Movie review by Greg Carlson Evoking that unique but difficult blend of period charm and contemporary performances, “Stage Beauty” operates with the same anachronistic spirit as “Shakespeare in Love.” Based on the play “Compleat Female Stage Beauty” by Jeffrey Hatcher, the movie version works hard to mine the gender politics of the London stage during […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “The Yes Men,” an affable and innocuous documentary that should have been made out of lightning bolts and razor blades, might have been great had it been cut to an hour and presented as an episode of “Frontline.” Directors Chris Smith and Sarah Price (joined this time by Dan Ollman) […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The first Pixar release to earn a PG rating, Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles” represents a step toward slightly more grown-up fare than “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.” Pixar’s movies have always attended to the adults in the audience (in the case of “Toy Story 2,” one could argue that misty-eyed […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Jonathan Glazer’s new film “Birth” is an engrossing fairy tale filled with tremendous acting, stunning photography, and quite possibly the year’s best musical score. Ruminating on the metaphysical possibilities of reincarnation, or perhaps merely the desire that lost loved ones could come back to us, “Birth” works on nearly every […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson David O. Russell’s “I Heart Huckabees” flirts equally with disaster and genius. A loquacious, irreverent romp, the movie juggles an all-star ensemble with deftness and economy, calling to mind a sort of Preston Sturges-meets-Charlie Kaufman genre implosion: anything can happen, and it often does. At the center of the chaos […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The latest curiosity from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the brash creators of “South Park,” is “Team America: World Police,” a “Thunderbirds”-esque marionette movie in which clunky puppets take the place of cut-out animation. Intended partially as a satire of Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and partially as a chaotic […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson It was too much to hope that somehow, “Friday Night Lights” would be significantly different from other high school sports movies, because in that final quarter, just like clockwork, it all comes down to one play. Sure, the movie squirms around with some of the difficult realities of the football-equals-everything […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Truncating the John Irving novel upon which his movie is based, and changing the title from “A Widow for One Year” to “The Door in the Floor,” director Tod Williams manages an impressive feat of good moviemaking. Irving rarely makes it to the screen without an abundance of the florid […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Patrice Leconte’s filmography is peppered with many excellent, entertaining movies, including “The Girl on the Bridge,” “Ridicule,” and “The Widow of Saint-Pierre.” His latest, “Intimate Strangers,” is not nearly as good as those three, but for patient audience members, it still manages to stimulate the senses in satisfying ways. Written […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson As sports comedies go, “Wimbledon” looks like a champ next to most of its competition. More often than not, it rises above the requisite clichés with reasonably believable dialogue and two terrific lead performers in Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst. The film follows the template developed in contemporary British films […]