Movie Reviews

The Story: An ex-con forms an attachment to a troubled 15-year-old boy with an abusive alcoholic father.  The Lowdown: Highly acclaimed in many quarters, Joe feels both disjointed and falsely sentimentalized to me, despite containing a strong performance by Nicolas Cage. A fondness for Southern gothic melodrama is essential.

The Story: Documentary about the work of recently discovered street photographer Vivian Maier, combined with the efforts to track down the story of this enigmatic woman. The Lowdown: Altogether captivating, fascinating and even moving documentary chronicling the work of and trying to understand a mid-20th century street photographer. If you only see one documentary a…

In Brief: The Great Santini comes with a long list of critical accolades from the time of its release. How this story of a hard-drinking, abusive Marine colonel and his impact on his family holds up is largely going to be a matter of taste. At best, it contains some strong performances and is competently…

The Story: A man finds himself haunted by a demon. The Lowdown: A crass, obvious and generally stupid send-up of popular horror movies.

The Story: A rare blue macaw named Blu and his family head off into the wilds of the Amazon.  The Lowdown: A wholly acceptable, palatable, colorful and unmemorable animated flick.

In Brief: The third film in World Cinema's monthlong tribute to French director Alain Resnais is also Resnais' third feature — the altogether remarkable and frankly mind-blowing Muriel, or The Time of Return (1963). It is also Resnais' first color film. On the surface, it's the story of an man visiting an old love from…

In Brief: The third film from this year's Asheville Jewish Film Festival is a tender and charming epistolary romance between a French Jewish girl (who recently moved to Israel) and a Palestinian boy who finds the girl's message in a bottle that she has her Israeli soldier brother throw into the Gaza Sea. From this note…

The Story: An NFL general manager — with his job on the line — feels the pressure on draft day. The Lowdown: A dull, ill-conceived and needlessly melodramatic film of very specialized interests and zero dramatic energy.

The Story: When a young wife's special lunch for her husband is mistakenly delivered to another, older man, an increasingly intimate correspondence ensues.  The Lowdown: Charming, quietly funny, elegantly made and sometimes heartbreakingly perceptive, The Lunchbox is one of 2014's must-see films. Stars Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur are marvelous.

The Story: A mysterious woman — who is apparently an alien — prowls the Glasgow area in a white van to seduce and dispatch men. The Lowdown: Highly acclaimed as fresh and original, Under the Skin is also slow-moving and on the deliberately impenetrable side. Yes, it's the critical sci-fi sensation of the moment, but…

In Brief: Special Guest Lisi Russell will help introduce this special screening of her late husband Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils. This is a deliberately shocking and deeply disturbing film depicting the events in the French town of Loudun in the 1634 "trial," torture and execution of the priest Urbain Grandier. Grandier is persecuted…

The Story: A desperate man is given a chance at winning a million dollars if he completes 13 tasks, which, unsurprisingly, turn out to be much worse than he imagines. The Lowdown: A truly solid horror thriller with a compelling, darkly humorous story and an unusually complex moral center. It's not perfect, but it's good.

The Story: An aging, far from affluent and not very happy British couple try to relive their honeymoon on a weekend in Paris. The Lowdown: Honestly, it was little more than a coin toss whether or not this fine film was going to be the Weekly Pick. It easily could have been. Rich, funny, touching…

In Brief: Two-hit wonder Frank LaLoggia's first film Fear No Evil (1981) is just about everything you could hope for in a late 1970s-early 1980s horror picture — and then some. It's exploitative, it's in crashingly bad taste, it's cheesy and it's pretty silly. Beyond that, it's rich in new wave and punk rock, has…

The Story: A young woman sets out to prove that her brother wasn't responsible for the murder of their father 11 years ago. The real culprit, she insists, is an evil mirror. The Lowdown: Though it's certainly good — and should be seen by discerning horror fans — Oculus is a few scares shy of the…

In Brief: It snagged four Oscars (including best actor) and was nominated for three more (including best picture), but what continues to set High Noon apart stems from its extreme simplicity. The narrative — a retired marshal stays on to deal with the return of the man he put in prison despite receiving no support…

The Story: Part two of Lars von Trier's study of the life of a nymphomaniac as she tells it to a sympathetic listener. The Lowdown: Grimmer and less fun than Vol. I but with its share of dark humor, Vol. II is consistently interesting, and occasionally, it truly soars. I suspect it would be (largely)…

In Brief: Werewolf of London is the first werewolf movie ever made, and it is still the best and most adult. It is often shunted aside in favor of the more famous Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man movies. That's too bad for a variety of reasons — not the least of which is that it's…

In Brief: The Asheville Jewish Film Festival's second offering this year is another documentary. This one is Jason Hutt's Sukkah City — a film about an architectural competition devoted to coming up with new designs for building a sukkah (a traditional temporary structure used during the festival of Sukkot). The idea is intriguing, and the…

The Story: Sequel to the popular Indonesian actioner The Raid: Redemption — with more of everything. The Lowdown: Depending on your tastes in such matters, The Raid 2 is likely to be either the ultimate in martial arts action thrillers, or it will be too much of a violent thing — especially at 2 1/2…

The Story: Captain America returns to battle a mysterious, powerful assassin. The Lowdown: A noisy actioner that is passable as big-budget entertainment.