Movie review by Greg Carlson Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, working with co-directors Christine Cynn and an anonymous Indonesian who, like so many other of the unnamed collaborators listed in the credits, elected to withhold identity out of personal fear, labored for half a decade on the brutal and brilliant “The Act of Killing.” A singular non-fiction […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson “Inside Llewyn Davis” echoes several pet concerns previously explored by Joel and Ethan Coen in their impressive body of work. Exquisite period detail evocative of a romanticized past, the struggle for some degree of personal integrity in a marketplace geared toward the lowest common denominator, and a trippy Homeric odyssey […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson The monochromatic landscapes of Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska” capture the open fields of America during a quixotic father-son road trip in which nothing and everything happens all at once. Bob Nelson’s screenplay introduces Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) shambling along the side of the road in Billings, Montana. Armed with a sweepstakes […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson In the opening scene of Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise: Love,” the Austrian filmmaker presents a series of vehicle-mounted shots focused on the faces of people with developmental disabilities as they careen around in bumper cars. Smashing into one another, their expressions run the gamut of highly intensified human emotion as Seidl […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Things move so quickly in the digital age that documentaries on contemporary Internet politics are risky business for diligent filmmakers committed to quality research. Alex Gibney, whose “Taxi to the Dark Side” earned the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, is as good as any non-fiction storyteller working today, and […]