Movie review by Greg Carlson Wholly dependent on audience desire to see a group of beautiful and skilled performers work on material unworthy of their talents, “Our Idiot Brother” is a wispy, featherweight sitcom in need of sharper characters and more defined conflicts. Paul Rudd trades his better-dressed and cleaner-cut Judd Apatow yuppies for a […]

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 […]