Movie review by Greg Carlson It’s not surprising that the support group Friends of Chernobyl Centers, U.S. has raised awareness by criticizing the cheap horror movie “Chernobyl Diaries,” a tired genre exercise with action so routine one imagines its producers reluctant to see it open anywhere near “The Cabin in the Woods,” a movie that […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Less successful than “Borat” and “Bruno,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” trades the ambush mockumentary for the more predictable terrain of fully-scripted narrative. Opening with a dedication to Kim Jong-il, Baron Cohen and director/regular collaborator Larry Charles establish Admiral General Hafez Aladeen, the ruler of the fictional North African Republic […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The eighth collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, “Dark Shadows” ranks much closer in corporatized sheen to “Alice in Wonderland” than the exuberant labor of love “Ed Wood.” With its massive budget and gorgeous production design directly at odds with the legendary thrift and grind of the 1,225 episodes […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Whit Stillman’s feature debut “Metropolitan,” which received an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay, is an object of love and desire for a cultish collection of cinephiles who came of age in the early 1990s. Many of those fans, having waited fourteen years (the date of “The Last Days of […]