Movie Reviews

The Story: A young black man growing up in a Miami housing project must struggle with his sexual identity as the world around him threatens to break his spirit. The Lowdown: A remarkably affective tale with ramifications that reach far beyond its subject, Moonlight is a must-see.

The Story: When mysterious alien spacecraft appear on Earth, one woman must learn to communicate with the visitors before humanity turns on them and destroys itself in the process. The Lowdown: Engaging and provocative, Arrival contributes a welcome touch of intellectualism to science fiction filmmaking.

The Story: Following the death of her husband (and police suspicion regarding her involvement), a Wiccan relocates to a small California town looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong ways. The Lowdown: A lovingly conceived pastiche of low-budget, late-1970s horror films, The Love Witch is a great idea poorly executed.

The Story: A widowed patriarch welcomes his out-sized, specifically dysfunctional family for the holidays. The Lowdown: Generic, flat and bloated with characters and plot, here's a holiday movie that only goes as far as its likable cast takes it.

The Story: A child psychologist must find a way to rescue a young boy while isolated in her New England home by a deadly ice storm. The Lowdown: A flat, unoriginal thriller, with a good performance from Naomi Watts, that relies too much on its goofy twist ending.

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society wraps up its November schedule with a staggeringly strange avant-garde triple-feature that should establish to absolutely anyone's satisfaction that modern experimental filmmakers will never hold a candle to the masters. First up we recreate the original 1929 double bill of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's seminal statement on Surrealism in cinema, the…

In Brief: It helps to understand the realities of life in post-War Italy to understand the birth of Italian Neo-Realism — something born as much from economic necessity as an artistic movement. Films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thieves (1948) were partly made simply because they were possible in a country where money was…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show is serving Grade-A turkey this week with Fred F. Sears’ deliriously dreadful The Giant Claw. To give some barometer of its quality, consider that it was released in June of 1957, and even though Sears died in November of that same year, in the intervening five months he…

In Brief: I've never been a fan of musicals, and A Chorus Line provides about as good an explanation as I can give as to why. Favoring style over substance yet somehow achieving neither, Richard Attenborough's 1985 adaptation of one of the longest-running and most successful stage musicals of all time seems to have missed the appeal of the…

The Story: Love and betrayal complicate a young thief's aspirations when a ploy to con a wealthy heiress out of her fortune is complicated by a forbidden romance. The Lowdown: Scintillating, sexy and seriously strange, Park Chan-wook's latest film is a departure for the director and a delight for audiences.

The Story: A talented but narcissistic neurosurgeon must seek mystical skills to heal himself when a car crash destroys his hands, leading to his unwitting involvement in an interdimensional conflict between good and evil. The Lowdown: The now-classic Marvel Studios formula with visual effects that go to 11, Doctor Strange is "excelsior!" with a few minor caveats.

The Story: When a group of grotesque giants threatens their way of life, a group of colorful trolls must muster the courage to stand up to them. The Lowdown: An aggressively cute animated musical, steeped in bright colors and hokey humor, that has little else to offer.

The Story: Biopic of Army medic and conscientious objector Desmond Doss, who refused to carry a gun during his training and the Battle of Okinawa. The Lowdown: Andrew Garfield is horribly miscast, and the story often unnecessarily veers away from the compelling true story to explore Doss’ nightmares. War is hell, but this film often is too.

In Brief: François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960) is one of those celebrated films that I had somehow just never seen till this weekend. Oh, I’d seen clips and knew a little about it—and I’d suspected that the phony gangster-movie opening of Ken Russell’s 1966 TV film on composer Georges Delerue, Don’t Shoot the Composer, was based on…

In Brief: Pépé le Moko is a massively influential film, and rightly so. Probably French poetic realist Julien Duvivier's best known work, this movie bridges the gap between poetic realism and the later emergence of film noir, presages Italian neorealism and the French New Wave, spawned a successful direct remake in the form of John Cromwell's Algiers and provided inspiration…

In Brief: Local interest runs high concerning writer-director Maggie Greenwald’s Songcatcher, owing to the fact that it was filmed around here. For that matter, parts of the film were made on the mountains not more than a few miles from where I’m writing this review. Thankfully, it turns out that Songcatcher is worth the fuss as…

In Brief: Better than most B-movies have any right to be, James Landis' The Sadist is a surprisingly powerful post-noir proto-slasher that was the first to deal with the twisted true story of Charlie Starkweather, a tale that would later be addressed by Terrence Malick in Badlands and Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers. This film benefits greatly from a bizarre,…

The Story: The history of Iggy and The Stooges, as told by the surviving band members. The Lowdown: Director Jim Jarmusch turns his talents to the rockumentary, providing a fun and engaging exploration of a band he clearly loves.

The Story: Several women in rural Montana struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives. The Lowdown: Writer-director Kelly Reichardt paints a vivid picture of the emotional experience of her protagonists in this series of loosely-related vignettes, but the stories don't seem to serve much of a purpose beyond their obvious beauty and affectiveness.

The Story: A young news anchor leads a life of desperation and depression, culminating in her dramatic on-air suicide. The Lowdown: A difficult film to watch — but rewarding nonetheless — Christine tackles a profoundly difficult subject adroitly but never quite surmounts the inherent difficulties of recounting this tragic true story.

The Story: "Symbologist" Robert Langdon returns to save the world from a man-made plague intended to thwart human overpopulation. The Lowdown: A painfully condescending pseudo-thriller pulled from the pages of yet another one of Dan Brown's abortive novels, Ron Howard continues to disappointingly beat the dead horse of The Da Vinci Code with predictable results.