Movie Reviews

The Story: A man with autism comes out of his shell when he falls in love with a young woman in his autism support group, but their romance is as conflicted and challenging as any other. The Lowdown: A touching and compelling love story rendered all the more laudable for its treatment of adults with autism as human beings…

The Story: A boy living in a dystopian future must win a virtual reality video game to save his escapist nostalgia pit from an evil organization that wants to put ads in it. The Lowdown: 140 minutes of computer-animated pop culture name-dropping masquerading as a movie.

The Story: A sexually precocious teen turns tricks to bail her deadbeat dad out of jail and then murders someone before falling in love with her stepbrother. The Lowdown: A rose by any other name would be more entertaining. Literally, looking at a rose for two hours would be better than watching this film.

The Story: Thinking her husband has betrayed her, a woman puts an elaborate plan for revenge into motion. The Lowdown: A movie that gaslights its own characters at the expense of tricking its audience.

The Story: After his church is burned down, a reverend must go to court to secure its remaining on a hostile college campus. The Lowdown: While a bit more measured and professional-looking than previous installments, this third time around is still incredibly inert and dull.

In Brief: While this surreal — and sexually charged — drama is certainly nowhere near the most unsettling thing Pier Paolo Pasolini ever made (that would be 1975's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom), Teorema is high on the Not for Everyone list. It's less that the film is upsetting (though some will find…

In Brief: While it may not be the best film he ever made, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is a prime example of the "Lubitsch Touch." A light, occasionally frivolous romantic comedy that gave James Stewart one of his most iconic early roles, Lubitsch's sense of story and characterization are second to none even if…

In Brief: It wasn't that long ago that Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin — then known mostly as Potemkin — was in the top five of nearly all lists of the greatest films ever made. While the 1925 Soviet film seems to have been downgraded in recent years, it remains an essential of cinematic literacy, one of…

The Story: Artist Andy Goldsworthy creates breathtaking art installations from natural materials. The Lowdown: A beautifully meditative look at a captivating artist that examines how time has changed both the man and his work.

The Story: A young woman involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility is convinced that a violent stalker has infiltrated the staff to torment her, but her assertions are disregarded as the ravings of a lunatic. The Lowdown: A Sam Fuller sendup shot on a cellphone, Soderbergh’s latest is a shockingly effective piece of pulp exploitation cinema.

The Story: Though the Kaiju are gone, intrepid Jaeger pilots face a new threat in the form of drones that are not what they appear to be. The Lowdown: Lacking the passion and playful originality of its predecessor, this sequel is a bloated exercise in redundancy.

The Story: After a series of disappearances in the world of garden ornaments, the world's most famous gnome detective is called in to crack the case. The Lowdown: A drab retread of an animated film that wastes a talented cast.

The Story: A teenage girl, suffering from a rare condition that makes her deathly allergic to sunlight, meets the boy of her dreams and has to choose between the isolated life she's always known and following her dreams of falling in love. The Lowdown: Like a live-action and weirdly insensitive version of that sun level…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show makes its triumphant return this week at The Black Cloud in West Asheville with a film as polarizing as it is traumatic: Shinya Tsukamoto's seminal classic of Japanese cyberpunk body horror, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Playing something like early Lynch by way of Cronenberg with a dose of Aronofsky on speed,…

In Brief: I'm not one to go in for '90s nostalgia, but thinking back to a time when I didn't have to hear about Donald Trump's illicit affairs with porn stars does have its appeal. The '90s were also a time when I still thought Luc Besson was cool — instead of a talentless, plagiarizing pervert with a thing…

In Brief: A remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne (1931) — itself based on a play of the same name by Georges de la Fouchardiere, which was based on the book by André Mouezy-Eon — is easily the darkest and most psychologically bleak of Fritz Lang's American output, which, almost by default, places it high…

The Story: Stalin's underlings vie for power in the wake of the dictator's death. The Lowdown: An uncompromisingly dark comedy with a bravura cast that expertly wields farce and satire to elucidate the inadequacies of government in general and totalitarianism in particular.

The Story: When cool, confident and closeted teen Simon is threatened with being outed to the whole school, he goes to complicated lengths to keep his secret while falling in love with another closeted stranger. The Lowdown: A sweet, sincere and attentive film about young love and friendship that passes the Howard Hawks test and…

The Story: A newly elected official in England's National Health Service throws a celebratory party, but revelations from her husband throw the proceedings into chaos. The Lowdown: A sophisticated satire skewering intellectual pomposity through expertly crafted characters portrayed by a top-notch cast.

The Story: A reissued, remastered version of the 2002 concert celebrating the life of George Harrison. The Lowdown: A star-studded concert film that suffers a bit due to unevenness and being strictly for fans.

The Story: Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels march toward the creation of their Communist Manifesto. The Lowdown: A generally stuffy biopic that's strangely structured like too many biopics, leading to a movie that's surprisingly unsurprising.