Movie review by Greg Carlson In the sixth chapter of Michael Lewis’s bestseller “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane likens the demeanor of his ball club to the comedy “Major League.” The direct comparison fails to make it into Bennet Miller’s handsome, understated, and fictionalized movie version of […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson A stylish noir based on the novel by James Sallis, “Drive” instantly commands the attention of the design-conscious, thrill-seeking moviegoer. Despite its explosive violence and the sweaty embrace of young male fans ready to anoint Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn the next “auteur du jour,” “Drive” takes turns summoning our […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Like several of Steven Soderbergh’s large canvas features – and even a few of his smaller ones – “Contagion” paints a grim scenario of human fragility, frailty, and fear. Workable as a metaphor for the post-9/11 world as readily as the economically depressed slow-motion global financial catastrophe (already explored in […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Based on a 2007 Israeli movie with the same title, John Madden’s remake of “The Debt” dramatizes Cold War-era Nazi hunting in East Berlin and a cloudy love triangle involving the Mossad agents sent to capture a villain known as the Surgeon of Birkenau. Cutting between the 1965 kidnapping assignment […]