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 […]