Movie Reviews

In Brief: Like Ridley’s best-known film (he’s only made three) The Reflecting Skin (1990), this is very clearly a horror movie — some of it is quite graphic — but it’s more of a very perverse fairy tale than a traditional horror movie. Put briefly, it’s the story of a young man (Sturgess) with a large, disfiguring,…

In Brief: How you feel about The Red Pony (1949) is going to depend a great deal on how you feel about the John Steinbeck story and the Aaron Copland music. Not being a fan of either — and just having a basic aversion to “life lesson” stories that deal with the death of a…

In Brief: I am quite certain that after watching The Turin Horse (2011) I swore I would never get suckered into sitting through another film by the Hungarian master of molasses-slow miserablism, Béla Tarr. Well, somehow I went back on that — partly out of curiosity to see what Mr. Tarr would do with color…

In Brief: Generally reviled at the time of its release, Joseph McGrath’s The Magic Christian (1969) has seen its appreciation skyrocket in recent years — deservedly so. What was once dismissed as tasteless and messy (never mind that these were deliberate) has now come to be seen as a brilliantly anarchic satire and perhaps the…

The Story: A 28-year-old woman puts her increasingly unbearable life on hold for a week to go hang out with some new high-school-age friends. The Lowdown: A thoroughly charming — even quite lovely — romantic comedy that addresses the topic of arrested development from a female perspective. Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz and Sam Rockwell…

The Story: A woman who loses her memory every time she sleeps tries to uncover the truth behind the accident that caused it. The Lowdown: A technically proficient film with a superb cast can’t overcome a flimsy, forgettable plot.

The Story: A cheap sociopathic criminal finds his calling providing dubiously legal “news” footage to LA TV stations. The Lowdown: Reasonably compelling — if unwholesome — portrait of a sociopath that falters in its attempt to be a satirical statement on modern media.

The Story: An ensemble look at race relations — in primarily comedic terms — at a largely white Ivy League college. The Lowdown: Fresh, witty, moving, edgy film that overcomes most of its first-time-filmmaker problems by the force of its characters and the drive of the film.

The Story: A man suspected of murdering his girlfriend awakes to find that he’s sprouted Satanic-looking horns that give him strange powers. The Lowdown: Wildly inventive, genre-spanning film that is by turns horrific, satirical and deeply tragic. It’s easily the best Halloween offering out there, but be prepared for something different.

The Story: Playing around with a Ouija board unleashes tepid horror. The Lowdown: In its favor, Ouija is pretty professional looking. Everything else, however, is on the dull side.

In Brief: David Lynch’s first foray into the world of — more or less — mainstream film, The Elephant Man (1980), is still his most accessible work and probably his most all-around popular. At the same time, its relative normalcy only goes so far. Oh, sure, it garnered a whopping eight Oscar nominations, but you’ll…

In Brief: This is a makeup screening for one that was scheduled in July and had to be canceled due to technical problems. What follows is a reprint of that review. Harry Lachman’s Dante’s Inferno (1935) may be more of a curio than anything else, but what a curio it is. It was an expensive…

The Story: A retired hit man heads out for revenge after his car is stolen and his dog is murdered. The Lowdown: Occasionally exceptional for being a simple, straightforward action picture, the film can’t sustain for its full running time, eventually unraveling into tedium.

In Brief: This marks the fifth time I’ve been called on to write about this film, and fan that I am, I’m pretty much out of things to add, so I’m mostly going with a review from 2007. I will, however, say that watching the film again, I was struck by how much better Guillermo…

In Brief: Though he started out pretty respectably at Universal in 1931, director Edward L. Cahn quickly gravitated to the land of the B-picture and by the 1950s was firmly entrenched in making exploitation trash, westerns and horror movies. These are what his reputation — such as it is — rests on. Some of it…

The Story: A man under investigation for a crime we aren’t apprised of for a long time gives his version of the events. The Lowdown: As an exercise in formal filmmaking, The Blue Room is hard to criticize, but the story, the film’s detached attitude, the overriding ambiguity and the lack of tension are another…

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society is having a special Halloween Budget Big Screen Showing of Brian De Palma's horror classic Carrie (1976) on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. at The Carolina. Actually, the AFS attempted to do this last year, but there was a moratorium on the film so that it couldn't compete…

The Story: A group of gay activists in Great Britain set out to help striking coal miners during the 1984 strike — whether the miners like it or not. The Lowdown: An absolutely pitch-perfect comedy-drama with a remarkable ensemble cast, a witty, literate script and a strong cinematic approach. There is absolutely no excuse for…

In Brief: Note carefully that this week's film shows at 8:45 p.m., not 8 p.m. It matters very little that George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941) is perhaps most notable for assembling one of the greatest casts of any horror movie and then giving them nothing much to do. It’s still the movie that has become ingrained…

The Story: Misanthropic drunk plays babysitter and mentor to a young boy. The Lowdown: Yes, it's almost alarmingly unmysterious — a feel-good crowd-pleaser tailored to the talents of star Bill Murray. You know where it's going from the onset, but the trip is still very enjoyable.

In Brief: Somewhere on the border between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (1929), David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) and David Cronenberg's Scanners (1981) lies Darren Aronofsky's debut film, Pi (1998). It clearly draws its surrealism from the first, its tone from the second and its "body horror" from the third. Yet this extremely…