Movie review by Greg Carlson Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s “Judy Blume Forever” debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in January and landed on Prime Video just ahead of the theatrical release this week of Kelly Fremon Craig’s highly anticipated adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” The one-two punch lands as […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Hereditary” notched one of the most dazzling directorial debuts in recent memory, catapulting writer-director Ari Aster into the rarefied air of A24 auteurs, the hearts of genre hounds, and the spotlight of serious crossover attention. The filmmaker utterly curb-stomped any thoughts of a sophomore slump with “Midsommar,” a folk horror […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson References to more than 200 films and dozens of insights from scholars, programmers, filmmakers, authors and others justify the more than three-hour running time of Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies founder Kier-La Janisse’s engrossing documentary “Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror.” Originally conceived by the director […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In “Boston Strangler,” writer-director Matt Ruskin revisits the mysteries and inconsistencies of the notorious serial killer’s case, adding another chapter to the onscreen saga of the true crime staple. Featuring outstanding performances by Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon as the journalists who investigated the story for the Boston Record American, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Baseball Hall of Fame slugger and living legend Reggie Jackson is the subject of Alexandria Stapleton’s eponymous feature documentary, now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video. No stranger to interviewing outsize personalities with egos to match – the director’s feature debut was the Roger Corman biography “Corman’s World: Exploits of a […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Kevin Armento’s play “Killers” inspired both Stefanie Abel Horowitz’s 2019 short film “Sometimes, I Think About Dying” and Rachel Lambert’s 2023 feature “Sometimes I Think About Dying” (no comma this time). Both movies were Sundance Film Festival selections. The former, which was also programmed in the pandemic-derailed 2020 Fargo Film […]

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,” […]