Movie Reviews

The Story: Documentary about the legendary FAME recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, The Lowdown: Bursting with great music and terrific interviews, this is easily the best music documentary to come our way this year.

The Story: Biopic about the final years of legendary martial arts master Ip Man. The Lowdown: While there isn't a shortage of action — with three standout sequences — this biographical film is really more of a drama. Beautifully designed and photographed with a masterful performance from Anthony Wong.

The Story: A lawyer gets involved in a drug deal that goes bad — very bad. The Lowdown: A strikingly original collaboration between director Ridley Scott and writer Cormac McCarthy has proven that personal filmmaking can still exist in mainstream film. What this sharply divisive film does not prove is that there's much market for…

In Brief: Frank Tuttle's This Gun for Hire (1942) is the film that catapulted Alan Ladd to stardom, established Ladd and Veronica Lake as a screen team and is just plain as close to a perfect representation of film noir as you're likely to get. A slick, Americanized update of Graham Greene's 1936 novel, the…

In Brief: One of stage director George Abbott's early talkie movie dabblings, The Cheat, stars Tallulah Bankhead in Paramount's second remake of Cecil B. DeMille's big 1915 hit film of the same name. This 1931 version is both more outrageus and less so. The "less so" part mostly involves removing the racial aspect of the…

The Story: Johnny Knoxville in old-man makeup, pulls pranks on unsuspecting bystanders. The Lowdown: A dumb, molasses-paced hidden-camera flick that tries to be both gross and heartfelt, but really just feels pointless.

The Story: Fact-based story of Princess Diana's love affair with a Pakistani heart surgeon during the last two years of her life. The Lowdown: Lightweight but handsome and well-acted account of the last years of Princess Diana's life. It's not a great picture, but it's entertaining, and Naomi Watts makes a strong impression as Diana.…

The Story: When the matriarch of a strange religious sect dies, it falls to her not-entirely-willing daughters to carry on their grim tradition. The Lowdown: This arty horror film is definitely something unusual and worthy. However, it may have trouble finding an audience, being too slow in its buildup for the horror crowd and too…

In Brief: Quaint is the first word that comes to mind for this mild British horror film by Amicus Productions. To put it in perspective, this is a movie calling itself The House That Dripped Blood, in which we see nary a drop of the red stuff. It's a poky little horror anthology loosely —…

The Story: A collection of four music-oriented documentary films. The Lowdown: The second week of The Carolina's mini-festival of music documentaries has something for just about everyone: from The Beatles to the Stones to Aretha Franklin to Big Star to a band improbably called Death.

The Story: A professional escape artist is sent to a secret, illegal prison that’s thought to be impenetrable. The Lowdown: A terminally dumb action picture that makes zero sense, manned by a couple of senior citizens out to prove they’ve still got it. Dreadfully bad.

The Story: The story of Julian Assange and the formation of WikiLeaks. The Lowdown: A decent, surprisingly fair thriller that falters by trying to be too hip.

In Brief: Calling The Company of Wolves (1985) a horror movie does it a disservice. It's not inaccurate, but this magical, allegorical fairy tale — that catapulted its filmmaker to international fame — is considerably more than a horror picture. In fact, it's more art film than horror flick, and some aspects of it are…

The Story: A downtrodden, misfit girl with a religious-fanatic mother discovers she has telekinetic powers and uses them to get back at her tormentors. The Lowdown: To paraphrase the 1976 Carrie's ad campaign, if you've got a taste for terror, go rent Brian De Palma's Carrie. This completely unnecessary remake is an insultingly inferior cash-grab.

In Brief: The first collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp made Depp a bonafide movie star and established Burton as one of the movies' great fantasists. It's a magical film of many delights and layers that remains as fresh today as it did in 1990 when it first appeared. (It also remains Burton's favorite,…

The Story: Cult hit -- at least on the horror festival circuit -- about a girl who seems to bring death to anyone who gets too near her. The Lowdown: Despite its reputation (legend almost) and the fact that it looks nice and is competently made, this is basically a pretty standard dead teenager movie…

The Story: A bored and sexually neglected wife decides to spice up her love by becoming a part-time call girl. The Lowdown: An unusual -- and unusually quiet -- marital drama in which it is almost incidental that the couple are lesbians. Intelligent, thought-provoking, and altogether realistic without being boring about it.

In Brief: Visually stunning, narratively unhinged (to the point of incoherence) Italian horror from Michele Soavi, who would go on to make the splendid Cemetry Man (1994). While this bizarre Rosemary's Baby reimagining is nowhere near that horror masterpiece, it's pretty irresistible in terms of primo nonsense. This, after all, is a movie that boasts…

In Brief: Robert Altman's penultimate feature, The Company, is a disappointment any way you slice it (thank goodness he went out with A Prairie Home Companion). It is, in fact, the only Altman film I've seen that came close to boring me. That it didn't is a testament to Altman as a filmmaker, because this…

In Brief: Effortlessly charming musical comedy about a young man who tries to save the family shoe business by focusing on the drag queen niche market — with shoes that exude sexiness but can withstand the weight of a man. Calling on the aid of a drag queen to help design the shoes — a…