Movie Reviews

In Brief: DeMille's pre-code Romans vs. Christians epic incensed censors and studio heads alike, and while his take on the subject matter is still pretty salacious, it probably didn't warrant the outcry it received (you never actually see Claudette Colbert's nipples in the milk bath, despite what some historians will tell you). Still, it's DeMille doing…

In Brief: World Cinema is bringing back Chicken with Plums, a film that didn't get the attention it should have when it was released a few years ago. Playful, gorgeous to look at, cinematically brilliant and finally heartbreakingly sad, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's 2011 film is one of those movies that ought to have…

The Story: A young man is possessed by a wrathful spirit at his wedding. The Lowdown: Equally unsettling and thought-provoking, Polish director Marcin Wrona's final film is an exceptional masterpiece of genre cinema.

The Story: A carefully considered examination of the political and economic pressures confronting America's system of publicly funded higher education. The Lowdown: Documentarian Steve Mims deftly dissects a difficult debate, laying bare the mechanisms threatening a cornerstone of our society. A must-see doc for anyone interested in education.

The Story: The tale of author JT Leroy, the creation and pseudonym of writer Laura Albert, from his creation to his rise to the ranks of celebrity. The Lowdown: An often unfocused and wandering doc that details an interesting story but, because of its one-sided nature, doesn't feel like it truly gets down to the truth.

The Story: Anthropomorphic bird species stops delivering babies to become the equivalent of Amazon.com until one of their own must intervene in a boy’s request for a baby brother. The Lowdown:  The non-Pixar animation eschews anything cerebral for physical comedy, but one can only look at goofy cartoon faces for so long before wondering why.

The Story: A town of simple farmers hire a band of mercenaries to defeat the tyrannical despot hellbent on stealing their land. The Lowdown: A fun (if somewhat frivolous) Western that works more often than it doesn't.

The Story: Documentary following unassuming impresario Danny Fields, who changed the face of American music in the '70s. The Lowdown: Brendan Toller's doc shines new light on a man who cast a long shadow, exploring Fields' involvement with the most prominent bands of the late-hippie and early-punk eras.

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society has scheduled an October celebration of the horror film to coincide with Frank Thompson's month-long lecture series on the genre's history at the Asheville School of Film. We're kicking things off with what arguably constitutes the first "true" horror film, 1920's The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. While earlier examples of films with…

In Brief: One of Roger Corman's best pictures and easily my favorite Dick Miller performance, A Bucket of Blood (1959) is an unquestionable cult classic. Few films so successfully blend black comedy and horror, and Corman's characteristic camp serves the subject matter perfectly. Charles B. Griffith's scathing script satirically skewers the beatnik subculture of the '60s, but might…

In Brief:  Robert Aldrich’s penultimate film (1979) is an easygoing work of some considerable charm that relies far too much on ethnic humor — mostly Jewish, but not entirely — to sit quite as comfortably as it might like. But the main interest in the film is probably Gene Wilder’s performance, which is interesting simply…

In Brief: Lindsay Anderson's landmark film If.... shook up world cinema, made a star of fairly obscure TV actor Malcolm McDowell and set Anderson on the road to creating his famous trilogy (If...., O Lucky Man!, Britannia Hospital). That's a pretty impressive accomplishment, but his tale of the resentment at an English boys school —…

The Story: Bridget Jones is back, and this time she's got a baby bump. But who's the dad? The Lowdown: A revisitation of the characters and ideas established 15 years ago in Bridget Jones' Diary, there's nothing particularly new here. For some viewers, this will be enough to warrant the price of admission.

The Story: The brother of one of the documentarians missing since the events of the original The Blair Witch Project recruits several friends to join him on a journey into the woods in which she disappeared. This turns out to be a predictably bad idea. The Lowdown: A pointless followup to a film with few merits beyond being first…

The Story:  Australia’s “biggest band you never heard of” prepares for a big Christian pop show at The Forum in Los Angeles. The Lowdown: If you like the music of Hillsong United, you are predisposed to enjoy this bland documentary. If not, you still get to hear about it and its ministry.

The Story: A young man returns home to visit his estranged family when he learns his mother is gravely ill. The Lowdown: A thoroughly unexceptional Sundance wannabe, The Hollars is indicative of the self-indulgent shortcomings of far too many independent dramedies.

In Brief: At the risk of starting an argument, I have to confess that Life of Brian is my favorite Monty Python film. It's also one of the most cogent statements on religiosity ever committed to celluloid. Following the exploits of a hapless Judean mistaken for the Messiah, this film skewers the socio-political posturing rampant in first-century…

In Brief: F. W. Murnau's 1926 interpretation of the classic tale of a pious alchemist who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge, youth and the love of a beautiful young woman, this is possibly the most accurate recounting of the story ever filmed. Murnau draws heavily from Goethe's play, but also from older folktales…

In Brief: A great deal of the appeal of The Artist is the pure novelty of the experience. It will probably be a lot of people’s first exposure to any silent film — at least as an entire feature-length movie — and in that respect, I suspect the film’s calculations are very shrewd indeed. Making it…

In Brief: The third film in François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, Stolen Kisses (1968) is probably the best after the original, which none of the sequels topped or even equaled. It's lightweight (a curiously insubstantial affair considering the political and cultural turmoil surrounding its making) and somewhat rambling, but very appealing and still embracing something…

The Story: Patriotic serviceman-turned-NSA-employee Edward Snowden wrestles with the decision to leak thousands of classified documents to the press when he discovers his government is complicit in questionable cybersurveillance tactics. The Lowdown: Though Joseph Gordon-Levitt initially struggles to find his footing as the lead, he and his excellent supporting cast overcome Oliver Stone's political bent to tell…