Movie review by Greg Carlson Self-conscious, geeky coder Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a contest to visit the sprawling private compound of his boss Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), a computer genius using his billions to pursue artificial intelligence in the form of an erotically charged machine named Ava (Alicia Vikander). Screenwriter/novelist Alex Garland makes his […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are New Yorkers Josh and Cornelia, married and rocketing through their forties. Childless and conflicted about it, the pressure from old friends/new parents Marina (Maria Dizzia) and Fletcher (Adam Horovitz) doesn’t exactly help. Josh is a documentary filmmaker whose current project has consumed nearly a […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The erroneous report that Tokyo office worker Takako Konishi died near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota on November 15, 2001 looking for the money buried in the snow by Steve Buscemi’s Carl Showalter in Joel Coen and Ethan Coen’s “Fargo” forms the basis of David Zellner and Nathan Zellner’s haunting, original “Kumiko […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy engineers a jaw-dropping feature debut in “The Tribe,” a stylistic tour de force that juxtaposes the gorgeousness of cinematic execution against the horror of the narrative’s unrelentingly grim subject matter. Set in a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf, “The Tribe” follows new student Sergey (Grygoriy Fesenko) as […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Gabe Polsky’s “Red Army” skates by as swiftly and forcefully as the larger-than-life hockey personalities it closely examines. Flipping the American “Miracle on Ice” narrative on its head, Polsky’s sharp, attentive documentary invites viewers to see the dominant Cold War rink soldiers of the Soviet Union’s national team not as […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Gender, class, marriage, and parenthood receive a good working over in Ruben Ostlund’s hilarious “Force Majeure,” a gorgeously photographed dream/nightmare vacation travelogue that smartly deploys a human-versus-nature leitmotif to situate the First World problems of its protagonists within a conversation about control, self-control, and our lack thereof. More preoccupied with […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Oscar-winning documentary feature “Citizenfour” is a you-are-there record of the National Security Agency’s global and domestic surveillance program revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, and what it lacks in cinematic panache it more than makes up for in jaw-dropping urgency and bomb-blast power. Alan Scherstuhl astutely points out that […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Craig Zobel’s film adaptation of “Z for Zachariah” is so loosely based on the book of the same name that fans of the novel will puzzle over many of the radical changes from page to screen. Written by Robert Leslie Conley under his pen name Robert C. O’Brien, “Z for […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering follow their Oscar-nominated “The Invisible War” – a harrowing expose of the United States military’s woeful record regarding the issue of sexual assault – with another film addressing the same massive injustice done to victims of rape on college campuses. “The Hunting Ground” […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “It Follows,” writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s sophomore effort, is a chilling companion piece to debut feature “The Myth of the American Sleepover.” A retro-styled thriller that pays homage to a variety of classic horror movies like “Diabolique,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “Halloween” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” Mitchell’s […]