Movie Reviews

In Brief: Incredibly creepy, surprisingly elaborate and almost a complete departure for Saw writer-director James Wan and his co-author Leigh Whannell as they trade in the pointless sadism of Saw for something more like classic horror with Dead Silence. Here they've cooked up a kind of local folklore yarn about the spirit of an evil…

The Story: Five subjects give their thoughts and — sometimes bizarre — theories on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The Lowdown: An entertaining — assuming you don’t take the ideas being presented too seriously — look at the way art and film are often overly-dissected and analyzed.

In Brief: Jean-Luc Godard's Tout Va Bien may be the single best representation of the filmmaker's work in that it's brilliant, stupid, fascinating, boring, compelling and infuriating at the same time. That strikes me as a perfect summation of the many faces of Godard packed into one movie. What the film is about is hard…

The Story: A troubled young woman goes home to reclaim her old friend, only to find the friend has changed since becoming a nun in a strict Orthodox convent. The Lowdown: Dark and disturbing drama about obsession — both sacred and profane — that will be for very specific tastes, owing to its slow pace…

The Story: A long-divorced couple pretend to be married in order not to upset their adopted son's conservative birth mother at his wedding. The Lowdown: An absolutely painfully awful waste of a good cast, 89 minutes of your life and however much you pay to see it.

The Story: The real-life tale of three dim-witted, steroid-riddled bodybuilders’ kidnapping and extortion scheme that eventually goes awry. The Lowdown: While occasionally falling prey to director Michael Bay’s worst habits, the finished product is incredibly entertaining, wonderfully absurd and boasts a superb cast — assuming you can handle Bay’s overbearing directorial style.

In Brief: John Barrymore (in a sometimes debatable state of sobriety) stars as a sharp lawyer, whose political ambitions put him at odds with his old pal, gangster Vanny Powers (William "Stage" Boyd). Enjoyable pre-code drama (makes no bones about Helen Twelvetrees' profession or the fact that she and Barrymore are living together without benefit…

In Brief: This year the Fine Arts Theatre's presentation of the Asheville Jewish Film Festival changes formats. Instead of a concentrated dose of films, they're running one film a week — every Thursday evening with a matinee on Friday — over the course of four weeks. The opener is this enjoyable and rather playful documentary.…

The Story: A caretaker on the remnants of a post-apocalyptic Earth learns things may not be as he's been told. The Lowdown: Solidly-produced, incredibly derivative sci-fi that gets by on competence, but not much more.

In Brief: The now little-known comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey star in this wild — and very politically incorrect (yes, that means blackface, among other things) — satire that finds the boys as barbers on an American Indian reservation, who are sent by the tribe as their representatives at a peace conference…

The Story: Two boys in a small Southern river town help a fugitive fix up a boat for his getaway with the woman he came back for. The Lowdown: An altogether exceptional film about Southern life as seen through the eyes of two boys on what seems to them a romantic adventure. Highly recommended.

In Brief: The cast and the premise of John Hough's Brass Target (1978) is considerably more interesting than the film itself. The idea that General Patton was deliberately killed in that 1945 "accident" to prevent him from uncovering what happened to a hijacked trainload of Nazi gold is intriguing enough. And the prospect of Robert…

The Story: After receiving a mysterious record in the mail, a radio DJ begins having strange visions that tie back into the Salem witch trials. The Lowdown: Director Rob Zombie’s most atmospheric, moody and downright strange film to date. A heavily symbolic piece of weirdo horror that’s the filmmaker’s best.

The Story: An aging member of a radical group finds his life turned upside down when his true identity comes to light. The Lowdown: Robert Redford directed and stars in this complex political suspense drama that boasts a smart script and something approaching a dream cast.

In Brief: Cinematographer-turned-filmmaker Nicolas Roeg's first solo film, Walkabout — the story of a pair of orphaned children lost in the Australian outback with only a young Aborigine on "walkabout" to aid them — holds up remarkably well more than 40 years later. It's a strange, quasi-mystical film that tantalizes the viewer with suggestion more…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show kicks off its fourth year with two fat slabs of 1950s cheese from the man who could give Kraft a run for their money: Mr. Bert I. Gordon. It's a double bill of the giant bug movie Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and the giant man movie War…

In Brief: Here is a rare opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of horror on the big screen — and in a brand new digital cinema print, meaning it probably looks better than it did in 1980 when it was first released. Kubrick is one of those filmmakers whose work truly cries out for big…

In Brief: Soylent Green is one of those movies that has drifted into the lexicon of popular culture based entirely on one line — the last in the film — that can't be repeated in any fair critique because that famous line gives away the whole point of the movie. On its own merits —…

In Brief: Believe it or not, this is the third anniversary of the Thursday Horror Picture Show — three solid years in pursuit of making Asheville warped. (Weird is so old hat by now.) That's a lot of blood under the bridge. And speaking of blood, the evening is being marked with a screening of…

In Brief: Well, the big boy is back -- proving that you can't keep the mightiest of all monsters down. It's only been about three months since our pal Gojira -- or Godzilla as he came to be known over here -- was in town to stomp and blast his way through Tokyo. World Cinema,…

In Brief: Brightly Technicolored musical comedy with a workable — and charmingly — plot involving mistaken identities, That Night in Rio scores its biggest points in the teaming of Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche as constantly bickering nightclub entertainers in Rio. Alice Faye (who always seems too smart for these pictures) and a second Don…