Movie review by Greg Carlson A dreadful, pitiful, and totally pointless exercise in humiliation, the cloddish follow-up to the Farrelly Brothers 1994 smash hit “Dumb and Dumber” – made back when Jim Carrey was focused on being funny instead of gunning for “serious” acting awards – falls flat from start to finish. With virtually zero […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In a way, it’s too bad that Vin Diesel, whose nearly instant stardom was based in large part on his performance in the original “The Fast and the Furious,” decided to opt out of the inevitable sequel. “A Man Apart,” which Diesel selected instead of “2 Fast 2 Furious” laid […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson According to “Wrong Turn,” another predictable entry in the long-stale teen horror genre, West Virginia is the sort of place where generations upon generations of inbreeding has led to a family of anti-social cannibals out to devour any traveler hapless enough to wander through the state’s rural back roads.  Despite […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson As a teenage coming-of-age comedy, “Bend It Like Beckham” is sturdy and reliable, with a conclusion so foreseeable you will likely telegraph it from the opening scenes. Tried and true tropes are firmly in place: a wedding, a love triangle, a passion for something your parents just don’t understand, and […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson It’s easy, sometimes, to forget that David Gordon Green is still a young man in his late 20s. “All the Real Girls” is only his second feature, following the haunting “George Washington,” but it resonates with a careful, unhurried patience that few filmmakers of Green’s generation are likely to be […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Laurel Canyon” could have been a really good movie.  Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko, whose “High Art” covered some of the same thematic territory, has the right cast, the right setting, and the right crew – especially in cinematographer Wally Pfister, nearly as masterful here as he was in “Insomnia.”  The problem […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The good news is that the weakest thing about “X2: X-Men United” is its limp title, another one of those shorthand sequel acronyms bestowed apparently for the benefit of the attention-span challenged or the near-illiterate (see: “T2,” “T3,” MiB 2,” MI:2,” etc.).  Marquee notwithstanding, director Bryan Singer proved the last […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Cons and capers can make for terrific screen entertainment. From “The Sting” to “The Grifters,” “Paper Moon” to “Catch Me If You Can,” scam artists at work on the fringes of respectable society fire the imaginations of us regular folk who only dream about being clever enough to fix the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson For a few years now, horror fans have eagerly awaited the release of rock-auteur Rob Zombie’s feature-filmmaking debut, the colorfully titled “House of 1000 Corpses.” Originally prepared for Universal Studios (a shrewd move considering the parade of references, visual and otherwise, to Zombie’s beloved, classic Universal horror film cycle), the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson As evidenced by the numbers of people turning out to see it, “Anger Management” is as close to a sure-fire success as you can get. The inspired teaming of the legendary Jack Nicholson and the, well, not legendary Adam Sandler covered a wide enough demographic for the honchos at Sony […]