Cinema

​Sean Baker’s ‘Red Rocket’ Is Go for Launch

January 20th, 2022

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Multiple observers have pointed to filmmaker Sean Baker’s practice of extending radical empathy to the characters who inhabit his fascinating, colorful film world. In “Red Rocket,” Baker continues to explore this territory with a high-wire balancing act that has energized critical debate and sparked conversation about the fictional depiction of reprehensible, immoral, and illegal behavior as demonstrated by the charming, the clever, and the…

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​Sean Baker’s ‘Red Rocket’ Is Go for Launch

January 20th, 2022

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Multiple observers have pointed to filmmaker Sean Baker’s practice of extending radical empathy to the characters who inhabit his fascinating, colorful film world. In “Red Rocket,” Baker continues to explore this territory with a high-wire balancing act that has energized critical debate and sparked conversation about the fictional depiction of reprehensible, immoral, and illegal behavior as demonstrated by the charming, the clever, and the…

Read more...


​Joachim Trier Introduces ‘The Worst Person in the World’

January 3rd, 2022

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The final film in Joachim Trier’s Oslo Trilogy, “The Worst Person in the World” is one of the best films of 2021. Despite several erroneous descriptions from critics tagging the movie as a romantic comedy, the film most assuredly belongs in the more temperamental sibling genre of romantic drama. Trier’s latest is not without humor, warmth, and wit, but its concerns stretch toward darkness, transience and melancholia. Told in a dozen chapters…

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​‘Drive My Car’: Hamaguchi Takes the Wheel

December 30th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The first Japanese winners of the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe expand “Drive My Car,” the short story of the same name in Haruki Murakami’s 2014 collection “Men Without Women,” to great success. And although the film lost the Palme d’Or to Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” director Hamaguchi’s heavy-duty drama has emerged as one of 2021’s most admired features, collecting a…

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This Is the Sound: Apichatpong Weerasethakul Contemplates ‘Memoria’

December 20th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

In one of the best scenes of the year, Tilda Swinton’s Jessica Holland sits with audio engineer Hernan Bedoya (Juan Pablo Urrego) behind a massive mixing console in a recording studio in Colombia, working to recreate a mysterious sound that she has been hearing intermittently. Drawing initially from a collection of stock effects, Jessica and Hernan take their time as they methodically narrow down the possibilities, closing in on the particular…

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​Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Licorice Pizza’ Has All the Best Toppings

December 15th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Since his big-screen debut in 1996, Paul Thomas Anderson has made a series of rewarding movies as identifiable by their director’s gift for dazzling cinematics as they are by bravura performances and exhilarating ensembles. Anderson has noted that there is nothing quite as exciting as watching a movie star at work, but unknown actors bring an altogether different kind of energy to the mix. In his ninth feature film, “Licorice Pizza,” the…

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Campion’s Triumphant ‘The Power of the Dog’ Will Be Award Season Contender

December 6th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Master filmmaker Jane Campion, notching a fresh Silver Lion win for Best Direction at the recent Venice Film Festival, returns to the screen after a twelve-year absence with “The Power of the Dog,” a handsome and potent Western based on the 1967 novel of the same title by Thomas Savage.

The 67-year-old’s last feature, the lovely John Keats/Fanny Brawne romance “Bright Star,” stands among Campion’s most accomplished movies. “The Power of…

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​Middleton and Spinney Look for ‘The Real Charlie Chaplin’

November 28th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

With almost surgical precision, filmmakers Peter Middleton and James Spinney dissect the life and work of “The Real Charlie Chaplin,” a worthwhile addition to the many studies of one of the most recognizable screen performers in cinema history. Their documentary functions partly as critical biography, using Chaplin’s narrative preoccupations as the basis of a psychoanalytical reading of the man’s oeuvre -- and vice versa. But the film also…

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​Collecting Movies With Kathleen Loock

November 23rd, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Kathleen Loock teaches American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Hannover. She writes about remakes, sequels, reboots, and seriality. Her recent publications include “Just When You Thought It Was Safe … : The Jaws Sequels,” “On the Realist Aesthetics of Digital De-Aging in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema,” and “Reboot, Requel, Legacyquel: Jurassic World and the Nostalgia Franchise.” Her video essay “Reproductive Futurism and…

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​Penny Lane Explains Why We Should Be Listening to Kenny G

November 20th, 2021

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Filmmaker Penny Lane follows her thought-provoking examination of the Satanic Temple with a subject many would anoint as the Devil of Smooth Jazz: Kenneth Gorelick, known to millions of record-buyers as Kenny G. Far from a straightforward biographical profile, Lane embraces G’s decades-long divisiveness to elaborate on questions of taste, appropriation, and genre.

And the musician’s participation in the documentary only adds to the film’s…

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