Movie review by Greg Carlson Tom Holland’s much loved 1985 vampire comedy “Fright Night” is respectably, though not spectacularly, remade with Colin Ferrell trying on Chris Sarandon’s considerably large fangs. Director Craig Gillespie and writer Marti Noxon retain the original’s hearty narrative foundation, updating a number of elements – some welcome, some not. Holland’s script, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Beginners,” writer-director-designer-artist Mike Mills’ huge improvement over “Thumbsucker,” sheds much of the self-consciously precious affect that bedeviled his feature narrative debut to relate a semi-autobiography about a young man coming to terms with the death of his father. Assembled as an asynchronous seesaw that totters between two principal timeframes, “Beginners” […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Inspired by Judith Thurman’s lovely 2008 feature in “The New Yorker,” Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” documents the astonishing artwork adorning the walls of France’s Chauvet Cave, the site of the world’s oldest known representational painted images. Discovered by a trio of speleologists in 1994, the Chauvet illustrations – […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens,” flinty amnesiac Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) joins the list of tight-lipped movie toughs eager to piece together out-of-focus memories. From Jason Bourne to the anterograde Lenny in “Memento,” the inability to recount one’s past operates like a cinematic magic bullet/tabula rasa that simultaneously liberates […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In the 2011 superhero movie derby, “Captain America: The First Avenger” emerges near the head of an underachieving class, capitalizing on its World War II timeframe and the accompanying sense of nostalgia inspired by the black and white simplicity of Allies vs. Axis. Punching the lights out of “The Green […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Ji-woon Kim’s “I Saw the Devil” has been likened to so-called “torture porn” titles including “Saw” and “Hostel,” but the appellation unfairly equates a thought-provoking police procedural/revenge thriller with an inferior set of mostly empty-vessel peers. Unquestionably, “I Saw the Devil” embraces explicit depictions of pain and suffering with a […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Cult filmmaker Monte Hellman, now approaching eighty years of age, returns to features following a two decade absence with “Road to Nowhere,” an atmospheric noir more interested in the line between illusion and reality than any half-baked crime employed to turn the gears of plot. From the opening title sequence, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Saying that “Transfomers: Dark of the Moon” improves upon or redeems the catastrophic hellishness of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is like suggesting it is preferable to drown than to be eaten alive by a Great White. Sure, you don’t suffer the horror of being torn limb from limb, but […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s nearly four-decades gestating cinematic poem, bears much fruit for admirers of the director’s (by turns) meditative, solemn, inscrutable, and prismatic approach to the craft of moviemaking as religious devotion. A two-hour and twenty minute skyscraper of thoughts, dreams, visions, and questions with no answers, […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Spanish director Jose Luis Guerin’s “In the City of Sylvia” encourages, even demands, the close attention of its viewers. With its meticulous framing, unhurried long takes, patient rhythm, and absence of dialogue, the movie rewards only those who concentrate on the talented filmmaker’s painstaking attention to detail. Photographed from the […]