Movie Reviews

In Brief: Last year's Oscar winner for best picture is showing on Oscar afternoon at the Hendersonville Film Society — which, if nothing else, allows viewers to see if this year's awards do a better or worse job of it. The film itself was — and is — a novelty for being in black and…

The Story: A cowardly, cautious alien must rescue his brash, idiotic brother from Area 51. The Lowdown: Harmless, uninspired animated pap with an unfortunately high dose of corny pop culture humor.

In Brief: Roman Polanski's first feature has become an art house staple and retains its importance in the filmmaker's oeuvre. It's a good, solid character study of three characters -- an upwardly mobile (in Polish terms) couple and the brash young man they ill-advisedly take with them on their boat. It's masterfully done and contains…

The Story: A nonconformist human boy in a small Southern town falls for an outsider/newcomer who happens to be a witch. The course of this love does not run smoothly. The Lowdown: Surprisingly likable, adult and even witty teen romance of the fantasy variety. The old pros help, but the script and the young leads…

The Story: When his son is arrested in Russia, John McClane goes to see what's afoot and ends up involved in massive mayhem. The Lowdown: It has Bruce Willis in his best remembered role. It has an R rating. It has car chases and shooting and explosions. It's also pretty awful.

In Brief: Atmospheric old dark house murder mystery with overtones of the horror movie — much like its title suggests — and an engagingly unusual flashback structure. It's all about what happens when a retiring lady of easy (nonexistent really) virtue assembles a group of her ex-paramours to shake them down for a big haul…

The Story: A woman on the run ends up in a sleepy coastal town while her past tries desperately to catch up with her. The Lowdown: Purely schmaltzy melodrama from the reigning goofball king of it, Nicholas Sparks, that redeems itself — or at least is made interesting -- by one supremely silly ending.

In Brief: The movie that introduced Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as a team, Flying Down to Rio is far from being an Astaire-Rogers picture (they play the comic second leads), but it's a terrific musical of the period all the same. Fred and Ginger may be sidelined by an uninteresting romance plot, but there…

The Story: A young woman accidentally kills her husband, seemingly due to side effects from her antidepressant medication, but things are perhaps more complicated — and nefarious — than they seem. The Lowdown: A beautifully shot, expertly acted, wholly professional murder thriller from Steven Soderbergh that misses greatness by being a bit too emotionally detached…

The Story: A husband tries to cope with his wife's terminal illness. The Lowdown: Highly-acclaimed in most quarters, this slow, humorless essay in human misery is not going to be to everyone's taste and will appeal mostly to those already sold on the director's style.

In Brief: Documentarian Ermanno Olmi's second feature film, Il Posto, finds the director in an unsurprising neo-realist mode — with some notable embellishments -- with this slice of life drama about a young man (Sandro Paserni) taking on a job that he expects to have for life with a big company. The observations on company…

In Brief: Dry humor is the order of the day in Whit Stillman's first film, Metropolitan — well, dry humor and a vein of deep sadness. It's basically nothing more than dropping in on a group of downwardly mobile upper-class young adults (with one readily accepted interloper) as they go through the motions of carrying…

In Brief: Terrence Malick's second film, Days of Heaven, is almost impossible to critique in normal terms. As drama, it's not entirely satisfactory in the usual sense. Its story is at once simple and rambling. It feels a lot more like a late period silent movie than something from 1978, but even that doesn't describe…

In Brief: What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than a double dose of that hand-wrapped Romeo known as Kharis? After all, this boy has been carrying the torch for his beloved Princess Ananka for well over 3,000 years. That's devotion — or terminal pig-headedness. And it's all on display in the final two movies…

The Story: When a woman steals a man's identity and runs up astronomical debts, her victim tracks her down in search of reparation. The Lowdown: Overlong, distasteful, strikingly unfunny and badly written. It's not directed all that well either.

The Story: A hit man — with the reluctant aid of a straight-laced cop — is out for revenge when his partner is murdered. The Lowdown: Run-of-the-mill macho action junk with no budget, jumbled action scenes and a needlessly convoluted plot.

The Story: A more sentient than average zombie falls in love with a human girl — with surprising (sort of) results. The Lowdown: Intensely likable, if never quite remarkable, new take on the tired old zombie movie. Purists may rail against it, but I'd raher have this than all umpteen Resident Evil pictures put together.

In Brief: Stuart Gordon's slightly more mainstream (very slightly), somewhat more serious second film is another take on a work of H.P. Lovecraft. In this case, it's actually a fairly close approximation of — and expansion on — the source material. OK, so it's doubtful that the prudish Lovecraft would have cared for the film's…

In Brief: No perfidy is too perfidious for Margaret Lockwood in — and as — The Wicked Lady, and it's a good thing because the film pretty much rises or falls on the depths of her depravity. Everyone else — with the exception of James Mason as a highwayman — is pretty bland in this…

The Story: Belgian detective Hercule Poirot finds himself in the position of solving a murder mystery on the Orient Express — with an abundance of suspects. The Lowdown: Absolutely first-rate, star-fueled, big-budget movie fare. As far as this type of movie, it's nothing short of perfection.

In Brief: Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu is one of the greatest of all Japanese films. (It may, in fact, be my favorite Japanese film of the 1950s). It was one of the films that first helped Japanese cinema find its footing in America, but don't mistake its art-house cred as a sign that this is in…