Movie Reviews

The Story: A top chef who threw it all away with bad behavior attempts a comeback. The Lowdown: Smart, funny, emotionally affecting — if maybe a little overstuffed — film anchored to interesting characters is much better than you've perhaps been led to believe. Very worth your time.

The Story: Dramatic recreation of the events of the 2004 60 Minutes story that destroyed the careers of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes. The Lowdown: Surprisingly effective as drama and thought-provoking on every other level, Truth only stumbles owing to a tendency to preach, but not enough to sink the film.

In Brief: Though I'll take The White Sheik (1952) for my dose of early Fellini any day of the week, I don't deny the greatness of La Strada (1954) and I certainly understand its appeal on numerous levels. While The White Sheik looks forward to the more fantastic works of Fellini from the 1960s, La…

In Brief: Taking a 1929 Ferenc Molnar play, retaining the basic plot and moving it to the Cold War era with Berlin divided by the Wall (or the incipient version of it), Billy Wilder crafted what may well be his funniest movie with One, Two, Three (1961). It’s certainly his fastest-paced film, and one built around the most…

The Story: An 800-year-old witch hunter squares off against an ill-tempered witch queen with rebirth on her mind. The Lowdown: Not good enough to be good, and not quite bad enough to be fun, this is strictly for Vin Diesel diehards.

The Story: A teenage girl finds Internet stardom and heads off to Los Angeles to a music career with her three sisters. The Lowdown: A tedious, innocuous and overlong adaptation of the ‘80s cartoon.

The Story: Biopic of Steve Jobs. The Lowdown: Solidly made, largely entertaining, but hardly the groundbreaking work it's been touted as.

In Brief: I saw Michael Winner’s The Sentinel (1977) on its opening weekend as part of a daylong bout of movie-going. It was the first film of the day, and I was frankly appalled by it, but it remains the only movie I remember from that outing (apart from a midnight show of Ken Russell’s 1971 film, The Boy Friend).…

In Brief: What is left to be said about The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)? It is — even if mostly by accident — one of the most perfectly cast movies ever made. Every player in it seems to have been born to play his or her role. The production values are top-notch. The score…

The Story: More paranormal tedium. The Lowdown: A complete waste of 88 very long minutes of your life.

In Brief: Generally speaking, Louis Malle’s films are a little too restrained for my taste, but, as with most things, there are exceptions. With Malle, the exception is his semiautobiographical 1987 work, Au Revoir, les Enfants, a film where his restraint is less pronounced than usual. Malle’s approach is perfectly suited to the subject —…

In Brief: Though highly regarded in some quarters, I have always found Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) a well-produced bore with literary pretensions of the stupefyingly trapped-in-amber kind. But I thought it was time to give it another try when this screening popped up. I wish I could say another viewing of this film version…

The Story: A meandering series of events that ultimately becomes the tale of a low-rent talent agent getting a young Afghan girl on the show "Afghan Star." The Lowdown: The first half of this Bill Murray vehicle is just not good, but it gives way in its second half to a movie that's very worth seeing to a degree that…

In Brief: For their Halloween movie, the Asheville Film Society revisits the Bob Hope horror-comedy The Ghost Breakers, which they showed four years ago. After spending nearly a year trying to figure out what to do with Hope, Paramount had struck gold by putting him in a film version of an “old dark house” stage play with The…

The Story: An Alabama high school football team struggling through integration finds inspiration through Christianity. The Lowdown: Another corny, schmaltzy and forgettable entry into the world of Christian cinema.

The Story: A young woman marries a strange man and discovers that life with him and his sister in the family mansion isn't what she'd hoped for. The Lowdown: Guillermo del Toro's gothic horror, haunted house shocker — perhaps the most visually striking film of the year — is in a class by itself. A…

The Story: The assorted monsters from R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books get loose, causing kid-friendly mayhem. The Lowdown: It's better than you probably think, and children should love it. It looks good, is pleasant enough, but anything more than that — probably not.

The Story: Two children become convinced that their mother — wrapped in bandages following cosmetic surgery — isn't their mother. The Lowdown: Highly regarded on the festival circuit it may be, but this is a slow, unpleasant thriller with the most transparent "twist" of all time.

The Story: A New Jersey police detective dying from cancer bands together with her domestic partner to fight bureaucratic idiocy for justice, equality and legal recognition of their relationship.  The Lowdown: A capable cast fails to elevate a weak script in this attempt to preach to the choir.

The Story: Fact-based story of Cold War politics and espionage. The Lowdown: Solid old-fashioned moviemaking with everything that implies. Sure, it's well-made and it does what it sets out to do, but there's an inescapable sense of ossification.

In Brief: Perhaps no series in the history of movies ever went to hell as fast as the seemingly endless spawn of Gojira — or Godzilla as it came to be known in the West. Oh, sure, the immediate cheapjack sequel Godzilla Raids Again (1955) — which made it to the U.S. in 1959 as Gigantis the Fire Monster — was at…