Movie Reviews

In Brief: The Thief (1952) is your basic McCarthy-era, Red Scare stuff, with traitor-scientist (Ray Milland) selling our atomic secrets to the enemy. There is, however, a gimmick: It has no dialogue. No, it's not a silent movie, but nobody ever says anything. Yes, that's as forced, fake and finally tedious as it sounds, but…

The Story: Cheesy melodrama plays out against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The Lowdown: It's a dumb disaster picture — with OK CGI disaster effects — made that much worse by lackluster leads and a bad script.

The Story: James Franco and Travis Matthews document their attempts to reimagine the cut footage from William Friedkin's Cruising. The Lowdown: Straddling the fence between documentary and narrative film, Interior. Leather Bar can't find a consistent tone but is occasionally of interest to a fairly narrow market.

The Story: Émile Zola's novel, Thérèse Raquin — a tale of repression, lust, murder, guilt and consequences — is brought to the screen. The Lowdown: Splendidly acted, scrupulously faithful and beautifully made, but lacking in deep emotional involvement.

The Story: After nearly being killed, Detroit cop Alex Murphy is resurrected in a mechanical body to fight crime as RoboCop. The Lowdown: A dull, uninspired remake traipsing around as high-minded social commentary, but really saying very little.

In Brief: World Cinema is bringing back Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) to give viewers a chance to compare it to its modern counterpart, The Great Beauty (currently playing at the Fine Arts). The Fellini film — which gave the world the term, "paparazzi" — marks the director's shift (but not complete break) from…

In Brief: George Arliss stars with Bette Davis in this extremely pleasant comedy about a shoe manufacturer who secretly takes on his late competitor's children and ends up working against his own company. It's purely an enjoyable comedy star vehicle for Arliss and his "discovery" Bette Davis, but it's still fine entertainment in its own…

In Brief: Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro star in Alan Parker's ultra-stylish blend of film noir and satanism, Angel Heart — an intense and intensely creepy horror film that remains one of the best films of the 1980s. Everything about the film — well, let's overlook two cheesy demon-eye effects — works to create…

In Brief: This is the second part of the Hendersonville Film Society's presentation of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra. The first part is actually better, but this is the Richard Burton section. For those wanting to see if they can spot the offscreen heat between him and Liz Taylor in the film (I can't), this is…

The Story: The ups and downs of two disparate couples over the course of a year. The Lowdown: A none-too-original romantic comedy that is nevertheless likable, often amusing and refreshingly adult.

The Story: Domestic drama centering on the complex issues surrounding a woman's divorce and purported remarriage. The Lowdown: Just exactly how The Past missed a Best Foreign Language Oscar nod is a mystery of some note. This is a powerful and compelling drama — structured as a mystery — that's on the short list of…

The Story: Dire doings and romantic hijinks at a school for vampires. The Lowdown: Muddled and not worth bothering to figure out, it's simply another piece of the winter wasteland — and the groundhog predicted six more weeks of this.

In Brief: It's got Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. It was directed by Stanley Donen. It's filled with Gershwin songs (augmented with a few others by lesser lights). What's not to love about the 1957 film, Funny Face? Well, pretty much nothing. It's colorful, glossy, tuneful, funny, romantic and it moves like lightning. Some carp…

The Story: An uninteresting Lego figure — living in a Lego world — is chosen to fulfill a prophecy that will free his people. The Lowdown: A fun, often cute (and eventually sappy) movie that’s enjoyable but disposable.

The Story: Fact-based story of the men who rescued stolen art treasures from the Nazis in WWII. The Lowdown: Yes, it should have been great and it's only pretty good, but it's not the disaster many have painted. It's solidly made and individual sequences are excellent, even if the whole doesn't work so well.

In Brief: SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELLED. World Cinema is bringing back Peter Weir's occult thriller The Last Wave (1977). This is the film that brought Weir to even greater international attention than his Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) had. Seen today, it's an imperfect affair that benefits from its intensely creepy atmosphere, but it suffers…

In Brief: The Hendersonville Film Society is showing the restored (complete) 1963 epic Cleopatra as its director intended — as two separate films. Part One details Cleopatra's (Elizabeth Taylor) romantic and political antics with Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison), and Part Two does the same with her and Marc Antony (Richard Burton). It does make for…

The Story: When hardcore player Jason falls in love he has trouble coming to terms with the changes in his worldview. The Lowdown: Extremely predictable, flat and lame, but it looks nice and has a few good moments — too few to make the difference.

In Brief: Yes, the third film in Lindsay Anderson's Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) trilogy, Britannia Hospital (1982), is the least successful of the three. It's flawed and uneven. It lacks the precision of If... (1968) and the quirky playfulness and non-stop creativity of O Lucky Man! Even so, this bitterly angry black comedy about a…

The Story: Compilations of the Oscar-nominated live action and animated shorts for 2014. This is being done as two separate showings with separate admissions. The Lowdown: While nothing is quite up to last year's live action winner, these are two solid collections of films — and your chance to be a truly knowledgeable Oscar-watcher.

In Brief: After Connie and Carla (2004) failed to duplicate the freakish $244 million success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) — by about $236 million — Nia Vardolos more or less withdrew from the scene, only to return with My Life in Ruins (2009). Apparently, she thought it was closer in tone to…