Movie Reviews

In Brief: Because Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch was released in the U.S. by Fox Searchlight and was in Russian with English subtitles, it opened here at the Fine Arts Theatre — and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. This stylized, stylish and very, very over-the-top vampire film was hardly the sort of thing that was geared to their…

The Story: The events leading up to the historical civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The Lowdown: Less a biopic of Martin Luther King than a largely successful attempt to capture a point in history. Its relevance to today is startling.

In Brief: Make no mistake: This is a two-and-a-half-star movie raised to four-star status solely on the performances of Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent. They make The Iron Lady (2011) worth a look, even though the movie itself — to put it kindly — is nothing special. The filmmaker — and more than a few critics…

The Story: After his ex-wife’s murdered and the crime is pinned on him, lumbering superspy Bryan Mills goes after the Russian mobsters responsible. The Lowdown: Dumb, pointless, noisy follow-up to the popular franchise and simply more of the same.

The Story: A moron TV interviewer and his only slightly brighter producer are tapped by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-Un when the dictator invites the pair to North Korea. The Lowdown: More a curio than a good movie and of more interest for its notoriety than anything else, The Interview is basically a Crosby-Hope…

Jacques Tati is not only an acquired taste, but you have to be in the right mood for his films — and I perhaps wasn't when I saw Playtime (1967). While I admired what he was doing with this disastrously ambitious production, I enjoyed it far less than his other films — even the often…

When the Asheville Film Society ran Leos Carax's third film, The Lovers on the Bridge (1991), one viewer called it the worst movie he'd ever seen. I feel certain there was a bit of hyperbole there, especially since no one else in a fairly packed house complained, but Carax is definitely not for everyone. His second film, Mauvais…

The Story: A stoner private eye in 1970 L.A. becomes embroiled in a twisty and dangerous mystery. The Lowdown: A determinedly complex and intentionally messy work that's rich in strange characters, offbeat comedy and a deeply human element underlying it all. It won't be to everyone's liking, but this is a great film.

The Story: More supernatural shenanigans from the resident specter of Eel Marsh House.  The Lowdown: Good looking, but uninvolving, unscary and wholly undistinguished.

Despite tacking on a backstory, Universal Pictures' 1940 stab at Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables clocks in at a tidy 90 minutes. (I have often wished all of Hawthorne's books had a similar economy.) It's also a reasonable approximation of the story, handled with a fair amount of style by refugee German…

Pure cheese sci-fi horror from good ol' Sam Katzman. In fact, it may be the lowest budget of all his 1950s thrillers, but Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) is so very 1950s — right down Richard Denning as the pipe-smoking egghead scientist who puts together the solution — that it's a delight. Possibly, its delights are…

In Brief: White Zombie (1932) prompted Paramount — still a tentative player in the horror genre at the time — to give Victor and Edward Halperin a one picture deal with the studio. Though lacking a major horror star like they'd had with Bela Lugosi in White Zombie, the arrangement gave them studio backing and…

In Brief: Laurel and Hardy's second feature film, Pack Up Your Troubles, is much smoother than their first, Pardon Us (1931), though it is often considered inferior to it. I'm not sure why, since it follows a similar approach. Both films play like three interconnected shorts — and the best of their work was the short…

The Story: An English professor with a horrific gambling problem finds himself owing a lot of money to a lot of dangerous people. The Lowdown: While watching a man self-destruct for 100 minutes might not sound like the most fun time one could have at the movies, a smart script and game cast make it…

In Brief: I object to Arthur on the basic principle that the cuddly, lovable alcoholic is a worn-out concept that puts a happy face on something that is neither cuddly, nor happy. It's a comedic notion that's older than the movies and had outlived its value long before this movie was made in 1981. That…

The Story: The story of Margaret Keane, the painter of all those big-eyed children in the 1960s. The Lowdown: A rewarding, funny, moving, even slightly frightening look into the world of art and artists from Tim Burton that benefits from the talents of Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.

The Story: The story of Alan Turing, the math genius who headed up breaking the secret of the German Enigma machine. The Lowdown: Sure, it's Oscar-bait, but if only all Oscar-bait was this finely crafted and intelligent, awards season would be a much more pleasant experience. Terrific direction, writing and performances carry the day.

The Story: With the magical tablet that allows museum exhibits to come to life slowly corroding and failing, the museum night watchman who oversees it heads to London to find out the tablet's secrets. The Lowdown: More of the same from this drab little franchise, a mish-mash of generally unfunny comedy and flat adventure.

The Story: A wee hobbit and a handful of dwarves must defend a mountain stronghold full of treasure from a number of enemies. The Lowdown: A mostly dull, repetitive, surprisingly humorless end to the stretched-thin trilogy.

The Story: Film version of the Broadway show. The Lowdown: By no means the disaster some have claimed, this new take on Annie is often clever and stylish and unfailingly good humored, but it's also uneven and a bit shy of greatness.

The Story: The fact-based story of Louis Zamperini. The Lowdown: Safe, competent, well made, well acted, but far less involving than it ought to be given the story and subject.