Movie review by Greg Carlson Noel Coward’s play “Easy Virtue” is reinterpreted for film by Stephan Elliott following the director’s nine-year hiatus from moviemaking. Elliott fails to match the charm of his beloved cult hit “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” but “Easy Virtue” is an entertaining enough variation on popular Jazz Age […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience” is as lean and brutal as its chief attraction Sasha Grey, the young starlet whose appearances in more than 150 porn videos lend the movie an air of authenticity – real or imagined – to the story of a high-priced call girl working in NYC […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Every Little Step,” a documentary chronicling the grueling audition process for the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line,” achieves some of its lofty goals while leaving just as many stories of the venerable musical frustratingly unexplored. Directors Adam Del Deo and James D. Stern are clearly more interested in the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson It should go without saying that the freshly released Tony Scott remake of the 1974 Joseph Sargent version of “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” is utterly unnecessary. Most remakes, reinterpretations, and re-imaginings are. Blasting off with a thumping remix of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” the new “Pelham” honors the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s follow-up to their excellent “Half Nelson” is called “Sugar,” and like their previous feature, the movie is a sharp-eyed examination of character and human nature that digs much deeper than the minor league baseball premise would suggest. Following the blossoming but shaky prospects of hopeful […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Nowhere near as good as several earlier Pixar efforts, “Up” still manages to engineer breathtaking technical moviemaking, personal flourishes, and (less attractively) a nose for commercial prospects in its archetypal story of loss, hope, and renewal. Like immediate predecessor “WALL-E,” the movie’s first third is easily its strongest, and the […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Sequels in lumbering, decades-old franchises slavishly obey the law of diminishing returns, and “Terminator Salvation,” the fourth feature in the series launched twenty-five years ago this October by James Cameron, is no exception. Painted in the dusty, dirty hues of gun-metal gray, McG’s addition to the venerable sci-fi/action behemoth takes […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson While many tales of illegal immigration made for the American movie market focus on the drama generated from crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s debut feature film “Sin Nombre” finds its footing in the arduous, perilous legs of the south to north journeys that happen long before Texas […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The subtitle of the American market translation of Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorrah” (just “Gomorra” in Italian) reads “a personal journey into the violent international empire of Naples’ organized crime system.” The description accurately explains the young journalist’s inside view of one of the world’s most corrupt regions, which Saviano claims is […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson On the pulpy pages of the Marvel comic books that have seen Wolverine evolve into one of the most popular characters in the medium, a thorough accounting of the irascible Canadian’s origins did not materialize until the person also known as Logan had been around for decades. Wolverine first showed […]