Movie Reviews

The Story: Documentary about finding the Higgs boson with the aid of Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The Lowdown: It is made by physicists and made for physicists — or at least pretty hard-core science enthusiasts. For that audience, it's fine, but the uninitiated may find it something of a slog.

Stanley Kubrick's still controversial masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange, is back where it belongs — well, for one show anyway — on the big screen. The newly restored, remastered digital cinema print should blow away all previous incarnations, revealing the film as close to what Kubrick intended as possible. It is a milestone of its time…

Yes, it has a ridiculous (and largely meaningless) title and was always referred to by Bette Davis as "idiotic" (well, her role kind of is), but Alfred E. Green's Parachute Jumper (1933) is really a lot of racy Pre-Code fun — with gags and references that would become impossible under regulations enforced one year later.…

That most playful of surrealists Luis Buñuel had one of his greatest successes with his 1967 essay in erotica Belle de Jour — in part, I suspect, because it is one of his least overtly surreal works (which may make it all the more surreal). But more, it was — and is — promoted for its…

The Story: A man sets out for revenge, only to become entangled in an even more treacherous mess. The Lowdown: A curious little movie on the difficulties of vengeance that has some good ideas, but eventually does little to set itself apart.

The Story: More Spider-Man action, more villains and a surprisingly effective human story in the middle. The Lowdown: As so-called event movies go, this latest Spider-Man opus is at best average, but the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy makes it above average — at least when it has the chance.

In Brief: Neil Jordan's much maligned — and much misunderstood — 1999 horror thriller may be considered over-the-top, but I've always found it more operatic than anything. It's an intense work of intense emotions that are played with that intensity — especially as concerns Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. It is also incredibly stylish,…

The Story: A young mouse becomes the improbable friend of a very large bear. The Lowdown: A film of immense charm and pleasingly non-gooey sweetness that also carries a solid theme about prejudice and how it's a learned response. It is not, however, preachy and is largely played for clever comedy.

The Story: After 12 years in prison, safecracker Dom Hemingway is out — and in search of everything he feels is owed him. The Lowdown: Unrepentant in its vulgarity, unflinching in its occasional violence, endlessly creative in its use of words and images and blessed with a brilliant performance from Jude Law, Dom Hemingway is…

The Story: A woman finds out the man of her dreams is actually married, and she and the wife become reluctant friends. The Lowdown: An overlong, unfunny and eventually despicable shot at the raunchy, female-centric comedy.

In Brief: A curio and two hybrids in one movie, Michael Curtiz's Noah's Ark (1928) is a fascinating relic of the late silent/early sound era. Like DeMille's 1923 The Ten Commandments, it's only partly a Biblical epic. Most of its first half is a WWI story that serves as a lead-in — and a rather…

In Brief: François Truffaut's sixth and final film of his Antoine Doinel series that began with Truffaut's first film The 400 Blows in 1959 is mostly a pure delight and a fine conclusion to the series. The only problem with Love on the Run (1979), which catches up with the 30-something Antoine for the first…

In Brief: The first of the great WWI films and the first film where King Vidor staked his claim as one of the great directors, The Big Parade suffers a bit today by having been eclipsed by other, better WWI films that followed it in short order — not to mention the fact that about…

The Story: In dystopian Detroit, an undercover cop and a criminal with a heart of gold must bust into a cordoned off slum and deactivate a nuclear device. The Lowdown: Dumb, convoluted actioner that manages to be incredibly boring in the bargain — despite all the fistfights and car chases.

The Story: An unorthodox researcher gets more than he bargained for when he tries to cure a supposedly possessed girl. The Lowdown: It is rich in atmosphere, undeniably creepy and reasonably intelligent, but there's an over-reliance on loud noises where the scares ought to be and a certain amount of cheese along the way.

In Brief: The Asheville Jewish Film Festival at the Fine Arts closes with a powerful, disturbing film, Aftermath, that might be described as a Holocaust story devoid of both Nazis and Jews. But that's not exactly right. It is, as its title indicates, a story that takes place long after the Holocaust but is still…

In Brief: Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960) is one of the most highly regarded of all horror films, though I've never been able to completely embrace it myself. Certainly, it's well made, has a certain poetic quality, some iconic imagery and a hypnotic performance from Edith Scob. But the film itself strikes me as essentially a fairly standard…

In Brief: World Cinema concludes its monthlong tribute to Alain Resnais with the filmmaker's 1980 film My American Uncle (Mon Oncle d'Amerique), and it's another winner. It takes the intersecting stories of three characters, along with the real evolutionary philospher Henri Laborit, and presents their stories in terms of a sociological/psychological study, based in part…

The Story: A dying computer genius has his mind uploaded to a computer so that he can live on beyond death. The Lowdown: An intriguing, nice-looking science fiction film that risks tackling some pretty big issues. It doesn't entirely succeed, but it remains above-average entertainment with something on its mind.

In Brief: Richard Lester's landmark film A Hard Day's Night (1964) not only captured a moment in time and propelled The Beatles even further into the realm of icons, but it revolutionized cinema — especially British cinema — and can be said to be the true birth of modern film. Borrowing much of its style…

The Story:  The story of a young boy who claims he went to heaven after nearly dying in surgery and his father’s (who is also a pastor) struggle to accept the tale. The Lowdown: A surprisingly theologically even-handed film that’s unfortunately dull, with no dramatic push behind it.