Movie review by Greg Carlson In “Creed III,” the latest installment of the “Rocky” spinoff series, Michael B. Jordan makes his directorial debut with a sturdy piece of franchise storytelling. Jordan also returns to the ring as the title character, his chiseled frame and obligatory training montage (in this one, Adonis tows a small airplane, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Scored with Melle Mel’s thumping, cautionary 1983 anthem “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It),” the red band trailer for “Cocaine Bear” promises a lot more fun, a lot more profanity, a lot more outrageousness, and a lot more laughs than director Elizabeth Banks delivers in the film itself. All the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In January, Anna Hints brought “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” to the 2023 Sundance Film Festival for the movie’s world premiere. It was the first time Sundance programmed a documentary feature made by a filmmaker from Estonia. By the end of the event, Hints would receive a well-deserved directing award in the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson One of the most buzzed-about movies at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival was “Magazine Dreams,” the sophomore feature from writer-director Elijah Bynum. The film, starring Jonathan Majors as a rage-prone bodybuilder, is not a home run, but it is a significant improvement over the filmmaker’s 2017 debut “Hot Summer Nights,” […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The unbelievable fate of one of the world’s largest collections of physical movie media is the subject of “Kim’s Video,” a fizzy and entertaining nonfiction cocktail mixing essay-like asides on the power of cinephilia with an oddball odyssey involving the Italian Mafia. Directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Beth de Araújo’s stunning “Soft & Quiet” plays out in real time, moving swiftly from its carefully calculated opening section to pick up speed as it rockets from one deeply unsettling sequence to the next. It is as terrifying as any film of 2022, a gripping thriller exposing grotesque anger […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage” reinterprets the historical biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the Bavarian royal assassinated in 1898. Popularly known as Sisi or Sissi, she married Emperor Franz Joseph I when she was 16 and has attracted ongoing attention in multiple theater, film and television productions over the years, including […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson With co-director Paul Sng, Celeste Bell celebrates the legacy of her mother Marianne Elliott-Said – known better to the world as the inimitable X-Ray Spex leader Poly Styrene – in an intimate documentary that is part memoir and part biography. Balancing the private and the public sides of the musician’s […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Just as “Aftersun” explores the contours of a father-daughter relationship, Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter” laser-focuses on the particulars of a parent-child bond. In this case, Hogg’s longtime friend, collaborator, and all-around force of nature Tilda Swinton plays both mother and daughter in a film linked to Hogg’s “Souvenir” series […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Shimmering like a mirage that retreats and dematerializes the closer one gets, “Aftersun” may just be the best movie of 2022. The self-described “emotionally autobiographical” feature debut of Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells, the film is a treasure for those viewers who prefer ambiguity and understatement. The deceptively straightforward story follows […]