Movie Reviews

In Brief: This is a makeup screening for one that was scheduled in July and had to be canceled due to technical problems. What follows is a reprint of that review. Harry Lachman’s Dante’s Inferno (1935) may be more of a curio than anything else, but what a curio it is. It was an expensive…

The Story: A retired hit man heads out for revenge after his car is stolen and his dog is murdered. The Lowdown: Occasionally exceptional for being a simple, straightforward action picture, the film can’t sustain for its full running time, eventually unraveling into tedium.

In Brief: This marks the fifth time I’ve been called on to write about this film, and fan that I am, I’m pretty much out of things to add, so I’m mostly going with a review from 2007. I will, however, say that watching the film again, I was struck by how much better Guillermo…

In Brief: Though he started out pretty respectably at Universal in 1931, director Edward L. Cahn quickly gravitated to the land of the B-picture and by the 1950s was firmly entrenched in making exploitation trash, westerns and horror movies. These are what his reputation — such as it is — rests on. Some of it…

The Story: A man under investigation for a crime we aren’t apprised of for a long time gives his version of the events. The Lowdown: As an exercise in formal filmmaking, The Blue Room is hard to criticize, but the story, the film’s detached attitude, the overriding ambiguity and the lack of tension are another…

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society is having a special Halloween Budget Big Screen Showing of Brian De Palma's horror classic Carrie (1976) on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. at The Carolina. Actually, the AFS attempted to do this last year, but there was a moratorium on the film so that it couldn't compete…

The Story: A group of gay activists in Great Britain set out to help striking coal miners during the 1984 strike — whether the miners like it or not. The Lowdown: An absolutely pitch-perfect comedy-drama with a remarkable ensemble cast, a witty, literate script and a strong cinematic approach. There is absolutely no excuse for…

In Brief: Note carefully that this week's film shows at 8:45 p.m., not 8 p.m. It matters very little that George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941) is perhaps most notable for assembling one of the greatest casts of any horror movie and then giving them nothing much to do. It’s still the movie that has become ingrained…

The Story: Misanthropic drunk plays babysitter and mentor to a young boy. The Lowdown: Yes, it's almost alarmingly unmysterious — a feel-good crowd-pleaser tailored to the talents of star Bill Murray. You know where it's going from the onset, but the trip is still very enjoyable.

In Brief: Somewhere on the border between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (1929), David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) and David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) lies Darren Aronofsky's debut film, Pi (1998). It clearly draws its surrealism from the first, its tone from the second and its "body horror" from the third. Yet this extremely…

In Brief: This is the 1939 Bob Hope version of the venerable old dark-house mystery The Cat and the Canary, and while it’s not as stylistically impressive as the 1927 Paul Leni silent, it’s probably an all-around more successful film. Strangely, considering it’s a Bob Hope movie (the one that made him a star, in fact), the…

In Brief: Though pretty obviously inspired by Julien Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy (1943) — the recurring dream business is a little too much to take as coincidence — the multidirector British horror anthology Dead of Night (1945) is the go-to movie as the source for all subsequent horror anthologies. Of course, since it's a portmanteau…

The Story: Animated fantasy grounded in the concept of the Day of the Dead. The Lowdown: Its actual plot may be fairly standard love triangle stuff, but The Book of Life's nonstop array of stunning images and invention — not to mention the freshness of its cultural identity — more than transcends its basic plot.

In Brief: A curious, occasionally fascinating, but unfortunately uneven look at the life and work of musician Nick Cave, as seen through the eyes — or more accurately, the memory — of Cave himself. Like so many documentaries, 20,000 Days on Earth depends mostly on your interest in Cave, his music and his thoughts on life,…

The Story: A post-D-Day war story about a tank crew making their way through Germany. The Lowdown: Violent, bloody, straightforward old-school war movie that overcomes its shortcomings in its battle scenes — with help from three of its five lead actors.

The Story: Old high school sweethearts reunited after the death of their mentor must look back on — and finally face — their past. The Lowdown: Run-of-the-mill goopy, melodramatic romance from the master of the form, novelist Nicholas Sparks.

The Story: A hotshot defense attorney is forced into defending his estranged dad’s murder charge. The Lowdown: A gooey mess of shameless Oscar bait clichés that’s watchable and little else.

The Story: The story of how Dracula got the way he is. The Lowdown: Slapdash, but slick, horror done in comic book terms. Too little horror, too much CGI — and yet another attempt to make a great villain sympathetic with an origin story. Phooey.

In Brief: According to the credits, Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich were the stars of Billy Wilder's excellent film version of Agatha Christie's hit play Witness for the Prosecution. But let's face it, the movie belongs to Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfrid Robards, the ailing but wily barrister defending Power on a murder charge. The premise finds…

In Brief: Erle C. Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls (1932) is without a doubt the grimmest and most completely horrific of all “golden age” horror films. That’s a statement that few are going to argue with. (It was banned — much to the delight of H.G. Wells, who hated what the filmmakers had done with his source novel —…

The Story: A put-upon young boy gets his wish that his family finds out what a bad day is like when they're on the receiving end. The Lowdown: A very long 80 minutes of obvious slapstick and loud performances pitched to the family-friendly crowd, which should demand better.