Movie Reviews

The Story: This year's nominees in consideration for the Best Animated Short Academy Award. The Lowdown: While some are better than others (as usual), this year's batch of animated Oscar nominees is worth a look for anyone interested in short-form animation.

The Story: This year's collection of Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short. The Lowdown: Three great films, one that's very good, and an absolute dog that should never have seen the light of day.

The Story: A boy raised on Mars escapes to Earth to track down his father. The Lowdown: A cornball teen romance mired in hokey, sentimental hogwash.

The Story: The demonic-girl-crawls-out-of-a-well video is back to kill more unsuspecting viewers, but this time she has the internet on her side. Also, her biological dad is revealed to have been a creep. Go figure. The Lowdown: An unnecessary sequel to a franchise I'd long considered dead, Rings contributes nothing of value to the mythos and somehow manages…

In Brief: I canceled The Sadist in November to make way for a bit of post-election counter-programming, although in retrospect, this might have been almost as appropriate as what I screened instead. We're finally getting back around to this creepy thriller about a madman with his finger on the trigger and a penchant for pushing people…

In Brief: Despite the controversy surrounding director Lasse Hallström's most recent film (A Dog's Purpose) and my personal disdain for the practices employed on set, I still have a soft-spot in my heart for My Life as a Dog (1985). The director's first mainstream success outside of Europe — unless you count ABBA: The Movie — My Life as…

In Brief: Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew (1967) wasn’t the first time this Shakespeare play was served up with a famous married couple in the lead roles. No, that honor goes to Sam Taylor’s 1929 version starring Hollywood royalty of that era, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. (And whether or not the main…

In Brief: In honor of my least favorite holiday (you'll notice I didn't devote a month's worth of programming to this one), the AFS will be screening Leo McCarey's classic romantic comedy, Love Affair, this Valentine's Day. With a script that vacillates between pithy humor and tear-jerking melodrama from Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story) and Delmer Daves…

The Story: The general history of the natural world, from the end of the last ice age to the present anthropocene, plays out through the biodiversity of a forest ecosystem. The Lowdown: A stunning visual spectacle with no shortage of purpose, this nature doc does more than simply record its subject — it draws the audience into the story.

The Story: Zombie slaying savant Alice returns to tie up loose ends by retrieving an antidote to the virus that has wiped out most of humanity. Like a lost set of car keys, it's been hidden in the same place the whole mess started fifteen years ago (she probably should have looked there first). The Lowdown: More of…

The Story: A gold prospector driven by a dream and a desire for approval gets embroiled in a scandal over a mine that might not be what it seems. The Lowdown: Based loosely on a true story but focused on a fictional character and set 15 years earlier than the events that inspired it, Gold is an amalgamation…

The Story: A dog journeys through successive reincarnate lifetimes before being reunited with his original owner. The Lowdown: An emotionally manipulative exercise in heartstring tugging that would have been reprehensible enough even without the recently revealed evidence of alleged animal cruelty on set.

In Brief: Most frequently referenced as the screen debut of a young Brooke Shields, writer-director Alfred Sole's 1976 religiously-themed proto-slasher Alice, Sweet Alice has justifiably built a cult following on the basis of its other merits — namely, a uniquely giallo-esque aesthetic heavily indebted to Hitchcock, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. The film's heavily atmospheric sense of unrelenting…

In Brief: As a mere boy, I bumped into Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle on television — and didn’t like it. Many years later, I saw part of his Traffic — and didn’t like it. With that, I wrote off Tati’s work as something just not for me. And it was with that in mind that I faced seeing M. Hulot’s Holiday (from…

In Brief: In honor of Black History Month, the Hendersonville Film Society will be revisiting 42: The Jackie Robinson Story. When the film premiered in 2013, it seemed like a missed opportunity to do justice to an important story about a great man — and having recently rewatched Alfred E. Green's 1950 take on the tale starring Robinson…

In Brief: With all due respect to George Cukor’s 1954 version — and a somewhat grim nod to Frank Pierson’s rock-star variant from 1976 — William A. Wellman’s original 1937 A Star Is Born is the essential Hollywood cautionary tale. It may owe something to Cukor’s 1932 film What Price Hollywood?, but it’s really its own animal. Changing the…

The Story: Famed Chilean poet and leftist politician Pablo Neruda flees the country, pursued by a relentless police inspector. The Lowdown: A fantastical take on a venerable historic figure, director Pablo Larraín and screenwriter Guillermo Calderón impart an unexpected sense of black humor to a significant subject.

The Story: An unhinged man with multiple personalities abducts three young girls for a nefarious purpose, the ramifications of which surpass their greatest fears. The Lowdown: Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has defied the odds, delivering a tightly wound thriller that very nearly redeems his reputation — thanks in no small part to a remarkable performance from James McAvoy.

The Story: A traveling salesman stumbles upon the opportunity of a lifetime when he comes across an inventive new type of restaurant conceived by two hard-working brothers. Their last name is McDonald, and the idea that is stolen from them changes the way the world eats. The Lowdown: A dramatization of Ray Kroc's now-infamous ousting of the actual…

The Story: A middle-aged single mother seeks the help of two younger women in raising her adolescent son against a backdrop of gender turmoil in the late 70s. The Lowdown: Worth watching for its fantastic ensemble cast and a prodigious performance from Annette Bening, but a serious let-down on the story front.

The Story: Superspy Xander Cage comes out of retirement to stop a cabal of evil criminals. The Lowdown: A loud, silly and mostly tedious actioner that's (at least) better than its predecessor but isn't helped by a dull performance by lead Vin Diesel.