Movie review by Greg Carlson Gabe Polsky’s “Red Army” skates by as swiftly and forcefully as the larger-than-life hockey personalities it closely examines. Flipping the American “Miracle on Ice” narrative on its head, Polsky’s sharp, attentive documentary invites viewers to see the dominant Cold War rink soldiers of the Soviet Union’s national team not as […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Gender, class, marriage, and parenthood receive a good working over in Ruben Ostlund’s hilarious “Force Majeure,” a gorgeously photographed dream/nightmare vacation travelogue that smartly deploys a human-versus-nature leitmotif to situate the First World problems of its protagonists within a conversation about control, self-control, and our lack thereof. More preoccupied with […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Oscar-winning documentary feature “Citizenfour” is a you-are-there record of the National Security Agency’s global and domestic surveillance program revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, and what it lacks in cinematic panache it more than makes up for in jaw-dropping urgency and bomb-blast power. Alan Scherstuhl astutely points out that […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Craig Zobel’s film adaptation of “Z for Zachariah” is so loosely based on the book of the same name that fans of the novel will puzzle over many of the radical changes from page to screen. Written by Robert Leslie Conley under his pen name Robert C. O’Brien, “Z for […]

Movie review by Greg Carlson Director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering follow their Oscar-nominated “The Invisible War” – a harrowing expose of the United States military’s woeful record regarding the issue of sexual assault – with another film addressing the same massive injustice done to victims of rape on college campuses. “The Hunting Ground” […]