Movie Reviews

In Brief: Strange obsessive "romance" from Leos Carax (Holy Motors) about a pair of street people — an artist losing her sight (Juliette Binoche) and drug-addled, mentally unstable man (Denis Lavant) — who end up living together on the Pont-Neuf Bridge. It is not a healthy relationship (to put it mildly), but it's a fascinating…

In Brief: Two films with the word “ghost” in the title and nary a specter in sight is the defining aspect of this double bill of 1940s horror — The Frozen Ghost (1945) and Invisible Ghost (1941). The first stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a hypnotist who has a breakdown when a man dies during…

In Brief: A diminished budget — and other things — conspire to make this attempt at a big screen Miss Marple movie to accompany successful Hercule Poirot films. It’s not actually bad, it’s just not all that hot. The magnificently catty duels of the divas — Liz Taylor and Kim Novak — are certainly fun,…

In Brief: Roman Polanski’s pitch-black comedy about a dysfunctional couple living in a castle (where Sir Walter Scott may or may not have written Rob Roy) whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of gangsters fleeing from the law. This is the film that Polanski made after Repulsion (1965) in order to be able to…

The Story: The story of the ten year hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Lowdown: Efficient and professionally made, but not all that involving due to a lack of characterization and a detached approach. How you feel about its controversial and off-hand depiction of torture will likely play a role in your assessment of the…

The Story: The true life tale of a family torn apart by a tsunami and the chaos that ensues. The Lowdown: Occasional fits of spectacular filmmaking are too often undercut by schmaltzy tendencies and a too formulaic script.

In Brief: It may come in third place for truly good horror movies made from Stephen King's novels, and it may come across as a little on the "normal" side for a David Cronenberg picture, but The Dead Zone (1983) is still a beautifully crafted horror film any way you look at it. The story…

In Brief: Scrupulously detailed, reasonably comprehensive and beautifully presented documentary on the great American poet Carl Sandburg from Asheville filmmaker Paul Bonesteel. Whatever you think you know about Sandburg, I suspect this movie — and the people in it — know more than you do, and it's quite a pleasure to find out.

In Brief: François Truffaut's first feature The 400 Blows (1959) struck a blow of its own as the first of the New Wave films — movies that came as a reaction to what was perceived as the stodginess of classical French filmmaking (and filmmaking around the world for that matter). It was a movement that…

The Story: The heretofore unheard of granddaughter of the heretofore unheard of filthy rich matriarch of the Sawyer clan goes to claim her inheritance. You can guess the rest. The Lowdown: Of course, it's garbage, but I've seen worse garbage. Then again, I've seen better. This is kind of mediocre garbage.

In Brief: The classic doomed lovers/shipboard romance movie, Tay Garnett's One Way Passage (1932) is a perfect blend of romantic tragedy and hard-boiled comedy — and, yes, the two do fit together. The two elements perfectly complement each other in a way you find in very few films. The basic story is that William Powell…

The Story: Two shoddy grandparents butt heads with their daughter (especially her views on parenting) when they’re asked to watch their coddled grandchildren for a week. The Lowdown: A tired comedy featuring tired stars in what amounts to a feature-length sitcom.

The Story: A corporate salesman tasked with buying up land for a natural gas company comes upon a town that won’t give in to him. The Lowdown: A well-intentioned attempt at a message picture that’s too mawkish and sentimental — and transparent — to work.

In Brief: Perhaps Pedro Almodóvar's most overlooked and underrated film, Live Flesh (1997) is also quite possibly one of his most personal works in that it uses its complex neo-noir storyline of infidelity, guilt, duplicity and mutual destruction to reflect upon both the Franco-controlled Spain into which he was born and the modern Spain in…

In Brief: Winner for Best Picture — and Director, Art Direction, Music, and Sound — Carol Reed's Oliver! was a big crowd-pleaser in 1968. It was big and colorful. It was impeccably cast. And it was filled with catchy songs that most of us had been hearing on the radio or TV variety shows ever…

The Story: In the midst of his burgeoning affair with a distant cousin, FDR has to entertain visiting British royalty on a mission to involve America in World War II. The Lowdown: Pleasant, but very slight comedy-drama helped by several strong performances.

In Brief: The Japanese giant monster — or kaiju — movie starts here, and nothing that came in the wake of Gojira (Godzilla) ever got anywhere near this dark, somber and downright grim film. Oh, sure, it has the same dumb special effects and the man-in-the-rubber-suit monster (helped by keeping the action dark), but there's…

The Story: A former slave and a bounty hunter team up to retrieve the ex-slave's wife from a notorious plantation in 1858. The Lowdown: Excessive and overblown in the grand Tarantino manner, the film is both deliberately shocking and provocative, while being extremely funny and a bracing blast of moviemaking for its own sake. Not…