The Story: Two young men in a small French mountain town deal with the confusion and turmoil of newfound homoerotic feelings. The Lowdown: A moving and affective portrayal of the basic human need for connection and intimacy, Being 17 transcends the sexuality of its protagonists to deliver a universal message.

The Story: The daughter of a famous painter navigates her own artistic and personal growth in 19th century Japan. The Lowdown: A beautifully understated film, Miss Hokusai utilizes creative narrative conceits and exceptional animation to provide a unique insight into a little-known historical figure.

The Story: A widowed medium and her two daughters get more than they bargained for when they incorporate a Ouija board into their seance con. The Lowdown: Surprisingly solid spook cinema that won't disappoint those in need of a Halloween fright fix.

The Story: Ex-military drifter Jack Reacher is back, but his plan for a hot date with an Army major he's never met goes awry when she's charged with treason and he's saddled with an unexpected paternity suit. The Lowdown: A painfully predictable and redundant revisitation of the Jack Reacher character that lacks the charm and off-kilter sensibility of…

The Story: A young girl flees a life of desperation and poverty to join a band of other disaffected teens selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door, a life she finds to be largely characterized by desperation and poverty. The Lowdown: Showcasing the worst proclivities of art house cinema, American Honey is a painfully overlong meditation on youthful irresponsibility that never…

In Brief: Just when you thought it was over, the AFS extends its grisly reach into November for one last Halloween horror film. Join us for a very special Budget Big Screen ticketed presentation of Alfred Hitchcock's perennial classic, Psycho. It's a definitive work in both Hitchcock's oeuvre and the genre as a whole, and opportunities to see it…

In Brief: Halloween is upon us, which means it's time for the Asheville Film Society's month of monstrosities to draw its dying breath with one last double feature, and in memoriam I've scheduled an undisputed classic alongside a heavy dose of classic camp. First up we have the final Hammer pairing of Christopher Lee's Dracula with Peter Cushing's Van Helsing,…

In Brief: The Hendersonville Film Society will be hosting a double feature this week starting with John Huston's second foray into Frank Capra's Why We Fight series of WWII documentaries, The Battle of San Pietro. If you've never seen any of Huston's documentary work this is great place to start, and it might have been seasonally appropriate had…

The Story: A working-class immigrant rescues a retired plow horse bound for the dog food factory, and together they take the aristocratic world of competitive horse jumping by storm. The Lowdown: This straightforward documentary showcases the touching partnership between a unique man and his remarkable horse as they overcome long odds, a genuinely moving story that will inspire even…

The Story: An American professor of Jewish history must confront a Holocaust denier in the British legal system, where the burden is on her to prove that his denials are false. The Lowdown: Based on a true story, Denial boasts a few outstanding performances but doesn't quite do its subject justice.

The Story: An autism-spectrum assassin with a knack for numbers finds himself between a rock and a hard place when a routine job goes awry, while federal agents close in on his carefully concealed identity. The Lowdown: An action flick simultaneously worse than it could've been and better than it has any right to be, The Accountant is fun but…

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society keeps on creepin' on with our October schedule of historic horror. Next up is Georges Franju's poetic masterpiece of fairy-tale fright, 1960's Eyes Without a Face. A film of almost unparalleled aesthetic beauty (within the genre, at least), this is possibly the best-remembered work of Cinematheque Française co-founder Franju despite being almost…

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society enters the final week of its month-long horror retrospective with Herk Harvey's under-seen cult classic, Carnival of Souls. This gem of low-budget ingenuity wrings every last drop from its almost laughably minuscule $30,000 budget, creating an intensely eerie atmosphere through its minimalistic style. The film's plot places it squarely on the existential…

The Story: A young Guatemalan peasant girl is torn between an arranged marriage and her dreams of a life with her lover in America. The Lowdown: A devastating story of youthful ignorance and cultural exploitation, Ixcanul will haunt audiences with its beauty and brutality.

The Story: An young girl clinging to her childhood is drawn into a bizarre fantasy world when her parents host a party for her fifteenth birthday. The Lowdown: Girl Asleep pulls off a delicate balancing act between fun and poignancy, dealing with a sensitive subject without condescension or cloying sentimentality.

The Story: A deeply disturbed divorcee fantasizes about the life of a perfect couple she sees on her daily commute, but the disappearance of the young woman she's been watching drags her into the middle of a possible murder mystery. The Lowdown: A tepid take on a best-selling novel, The Girl on the Train hits rote genre notes with passionless execution.

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society's October reign of terror marches on with our second double feature of the month. First up, we have Tod Browning's 1932 classic Freaks. Browning's most well-known work outside of Dracula and arguably his best (I might make the case for some of his work with Lon Chaney, though few others do), Freaks was derided by…

In Brief: The first of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour "Road to..." films, The Road to Singapore may not be my favorite of the series (or even in my top three, which would be Zanzibar, Morocco and Utopia in no particular order) but all of the constituent pieces were in place for the unassailable greatness that was to come. It was…

The Story: A harried Italian director struggles to balance personal and professional responsibilities, helming a problematic film production as her aging mother nears death. The Lowdown: A densely layered psychological statement with a prevalent sense of humor, Mia Madre is a deeply personal film with broad relatability and appeal.