Movie Reviews

The Story: Documentary about a very peculiar art forger — one who makes gifts of his forgeries to altogether-too-credulous museums. The Lowdown: Immensely likable little documentary about a singularly strange man with a penchant for gifting museums with his forgeries of the works of famous artists. It's pretty indifferent as filmmaking, but its subject and…

In Brief: This debut feature from Iranian director Maryam Shahriar is a specialized film for specialized tastes. Those with a keen interest in Iranian cinema should probably add at least a half-star to my rating. Others might approach this slow-moving, unrelentingly grim movie about a young rural Iranian woman (Altinay Ghelich Taghani), forced into having…

The Story: Eight intercut — sometimes connected — stories of life in the age of omnipresent social media. The Lowdown: It's a worthy idea and there are some moments of grace, but this takedown of society losing actual human connection through its online and text messaging simulation of interaction is too unfocused and overstuffed to…

In Brief: Ken Russell's last large-scale theatrical work, The Rainbow (1989) was the most elaborate of the three films he made for producer Dan Ireland at Vestron Pictures. In many ways, it was an attempt to recapture the quality of Women in Love from 20 years earlier. After all, D.H. Lawrence's novel was the book…

In Brief: Lisi Russell (Mrs. Ken Russell) joins the Asheville Film Society to introduce this special Budget Big Screen showing of Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975),  a movie she was slated to costar in — that is until her mother found out about it. It is hands down the most unrestrained film ever made by the…

In Brief: Yes, it's got a ridiculous title — and boasts an even more ridiculous, yet utterly charming, monster — but Roy Del Ruth's The Alligator People is actually one of the better horror movies of the 1950s. The script by Orville H. Hampton is tightly constructed and reasonably literate (within the limits of the…

The Story: After people disappear due to the rapture, those left behind must deal with the chaos and aftermath. The Lowdown: A goofy, cheap, idiotic thriller with a disappointingly restrained Nicolas Cage performance at its center.

In Brief: Alejandro González Iñárritu and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga made their bid to move into the mainstream with Babel (2006), a film that was nothing if not ambitious. Taking their standard approach of multiple stories that ultimately connect to create a larger picture, they moved a step further by making the stories global…

The Story: When a man's wife goes missing, the attention shifts from sympathetic to suspicion that he murdered her. The Lowdown: Deeply cynical, darkly funny, sometimes brutal, very powerful filmmaking that may make you a little queasy, but will almost certainly entertain you to no end.

The Story: A young couple are menaced by a creepy doll that's possessed by a demon. The Lowdown: Fairly perfunctory horror that purports to be the origin story of the doll seen early on in last year's The Conjuring. There are a few good shocks, but a lack of atmosphere and a truly awful script…

In Brief: These are the first two movies in Universal's famous Sherlock Holmes series with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. The studio opted to bring the duo back by streamlining and updating the concept. Instead of costly period pieces, they would make Holmes and Watson contemporary and build a series of classy B-pictures around them.…

The Story: A down-on-his-luck failed writer inherits a Parisian apartment from his late father, only to find it inhabited by a mother and daughter, who — due to a quirk in French law — he must also take care of until the mother’s death. The Lowdown: A surprisingly dark look at the effects our parents…

The Story: A disgruntled psychiatrist goes on a journey — literal and spiritual — to try to understand what makes people happy. The Lowdown: It's too long, takes too long finding its footing and doesn't offer any new answers, but Hector and the Search for Happiness is a pleasant little movie that wears its heart…

In Brief: Often touted as being a faithful adaptation of John Buchan's novel, Don Sharp's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978) — the only version of the story where 39 is spelled out — might better be called "more faithful than the earlier versions." As a film, it's not in the same universe as Hitchcock's 1935 version,…

The Story: Fact-based story of reporter Gary Webb, who linked the CIA to using the drug trade to fund Nicaraguan militias. The Lowdown: Slick, glossy crusading reporter movie with a strong lead performance, but also lacking in being anything other than a basic example of its genre.

The Story: A status-seeking villain demonizes and plans on destroying a peaceful community of harmless trolls to achieve his goals. The Lowdown: Not quite up to the two previous films from the Laika studios, but with more than enough twisted creativity to make it very worthwhile.

In Brief: Undeniably entertaining, but laughably preposterous lightweight film noir from the pre-horror days of Hammer Films, Stolen Face (1952) is fairly typical of its period. Like many British films of the 1950s, it trades on the presence of a Hollywood star who could longer afford to be too choosy, but whose name still had…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show opens October — the month of Halloween — with Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), the movie from which the first wave of the horror film stems. To call it the horror picture that started it all would not be overstating the case. It set the tone and style for…

In Brief: It's a double feature of Charlie Chan mysteries from the final days of the series at 20th Century Fox, and unlike most last films in a series, the Fox Chans went out on a high note — thanks in no small part to the stylishly atmospheric direction of former painter Harry Lachman. (Lachman…

In Brief: There are modest pleasures to be found in French animator Michel Ocelot's Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), but viewers who are not especially interested in French animation or African folklore (as filtered through the filmmaker's vision) may find its pleasures a little too modest. The film recounts the story of Kirikou, who is…

The Story: A home improvement store employee with a mysterious past takes on the Russian mob. The Lowdown: An incredibly uneven movie that oscillates between goofy, vaguely competent and out-and-out dumb, while managing to at least be a mildly entertaining distraction.