Mystic River contains some great performances, plus a lot of mood and atmosphere. It’s very well made, which is no surprise coming from Clint Eastwood (who continues — even after the box-office disappointment of Blood Work — to craft films his way, making no effort to be trendy, hip or overly concerned with demographics). With […]
This clever, goofy little comedy by Greensboro filmmaker Thomas Barker (with assistance by Asheville Disclaimer writer Dave Cole, who also plays the title role of Morris) is not a great film. By the end, in fact, it’s slightly worn out its welcome. But it does show what a little inspiration, a lot of making-do and […]
The official movie-industry-rating description for Thirteen sums up why this film makes adults squirm: It’s rated R “for drug use, self-destructive violence, language and sexuality — all involving young teens.” In other words, this is one of those movies about teenagers that we don’t want teenagers to see, and they probably will anyway. All we […]
What can you say about a movie where, when the hero addresses the bad guy with, “So you did all this to become immortal — why?,” he’s answered with, “To live forever”? Apart from marveling at the obviousness of the response, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of needed comment. One acquaintance dubbed The […]
Back in 1973 when Paper Moon came out, director Peter Bogdanovich was Hollywood’s Golden Boy — fresh from the double-punch success of The Last Picture Show and What’s Up, Doc?. Paper Moon would continue that winning streak, but it would be the last of his films to get by on a free pass. (Daisy Miller […]
Just how seriously does Quentin Tarantino take himself? I am increasingly convinced by the evidence on the screen that the director doesn’t take himself seriously at all, even though his more devoted followers do — and Miramax seems to have bought into that same mindset with the highly touted Kill Bill Vol. 1. Not only […]
Yes, this is a bit lower on the quirk-o-meter than usual for the Coen brothers, but that hardly means that Intolerable Cruelty is quirk-free. In just about anyone else’s filmography, it would be considered at least mildly off-the-wall. While neither as good — nor as strange — as Coen offerings Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, O […]
In his feature-film debut, director John Hoffman delivers a hopelessly endearing young male lead, a few guffaws from goofy pooch antics, and even a throat-lumping moment or two about human-canine bonding. But in the end, Good Boy is about as exciting as watching Rover roll over and play dead. Owen Baker (Liam Aiken, Road to […]
It’s ironic that the best film of the summer should come to Asheville when the leaves are starting to change. Step Into Liquid innocently claims to be a documentary on surfing, sort of Everything You Wanted to Know About Today’s Surfing in Less Than Ninety Minutes. In truth, Liquid is a spiritual experience that’s only […]
Out of Time attempts to be an old-style film noir — and it sometimes succeeds in at least creating that illusion. The problem is, it’s just that: an illusion. There’s very little within this film’s often stylish confines that isn’t cobbled from other sources, most notably John Farrow’s The Big Clock (for purposes of plot) […]
Lost in Translation seems to be the movie to see these days. Yes, it’s been out for three weeks (even if it just got to Asheville) and it’s at the bottom of the Top Ten while The Rundown sits in the No. 1 spot. The Rundown, however, is on no less than 3,152 screens, while […]
This movie is a well-crafted slice of life that is too painfully realistic to be enjoyable and concerns people who are so pathetically stuck that all you want to do is scream at them to get off the pity pot and go see a good action flick. If the characters in The Secret Lives of […]
School of Rock is both better and worse than I expected. Any movie by the maker of Wanking … er, Waking Life that didn’t send me heading for the exit the minute of the final fade-out is pretty remarkable. And maybe that’s due to director Richard Linklater and screenwriter/actor Mike White (The Good Girl) having […]
Duplex is a Danny DeVito picture, so that means certain things are a given. The film will be, for instance, immaculately designed. The color scheme will lean toward dark, deep shades (Duplex‘s 19th-century Brooklyn house lends itself to this perfectly), and the entire movie will have a rich, heavily saturated look. The performances will be, […]
The only consistent thing about this strange hybrid is its relentless blue-gray color scheme. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve seen the look of the entire film — which, for all intents and purposes, might have been shot in black and white. Otherwise, Underworld is an inexpressibly silly creation that exists somewhere in the […]
I discovered not long ago that you could pull up profiles of RottenTomatoes.com reviewers and see samples of each has rated as best and worst, and through a process of mystical divination or mathematics, the percentage of times a critic is in accord with his fellow reviewers on the “Tomatometer.” On average, I agree with […]
I’m sorry to say that the best preview of the summer didn’t deliver the best film. My sister and I, both big fans of Robert Duvall and any movie that’s sentimental and has lots of wide-open spaces and goofy dogs (as well as a fat pig and an old lion) were eagerly anticipating Secondhand Lions. […]
Rundown is the movie of the year for action-film fans. The relatively unknown team of director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) and cinematographer Tobias A Schliessler had a grand time pushing the action envelope. Combining wresting, boxing, gymnastics, martial arts, Crouching Tiger-style aerobatics, rope swinging and bottle crashing with nasty whips and general mayhem, they’ve […]
Cinema in the Park goes out this year with not only a bang, but a shudder. F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is the granddaddy of all vampire films — but don’t let that antique appellation throw you, because 81 years after its release, it remains one of most singularly creepy and enthralling movies ever made in any […]
The library concludes its Movie Madness series with the debut feature of Guillermo Del Toro — which ranks as possibly his best film. Even more than his subsequent and ultimately too horrifically tepid The Devil’s Backbone, Del Toro gives us in Cronos a horror film that Luis Bunuel might have made, had Bunuel made horror […]
Open note to director Mike Figgis: Stick with what you know. To the movie-going public at large, Figgis is probably best known for Leaving Las Vegas. Otherwise, his name is mostly associated with artsy, independent projects that few people have ever seen — and none of which offers any suggestion that the filmmaker was the […]
