Movie Reviews

In Brief: Ernst Lubitsch's second sound film Monte Carlo finds the great filmmaker without the benefit of Maurice Chevalier but with a much tighter, funnier screenplay than its famous predecessor. Lubitsch himself seems more relaxed with the new medium of sound here and creates a wonderful souffle of comedy and music — of the kind…

In Brief:  World Cinema continues their monthlong Alain Resnais tribute with the director's enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad — a dreamlike fantasy about two people who may or may not have met "last year at Marienbad" meeting there again. It is by turns mesmerizing and maddening, but it is never less than fascinating. Its meaning…

In Brief: (Make-up showing of the one cancelled by snow.) Despite its full title, Spider Baby probably isn't the maddest story ever told, but it's in the running — at least as schlock exploitation film is concerned. Enjoyably trashy and occasionally downright amateurish, it's the fairly silly story of a house full of folks suffering…

The Story: A foul-mouthed 40-something finds a loophole for entering a children’s spelling bee, which he plans on making a mockery of. The Lowdown: An occasionally amusing, sometimes sweet comedy with solid direction that unfortunately does little to be memorable.

The Story: Inventor Tim Jenison sets out to prove how Vermeer painted his pictures by duplicating his method. The Lowdown: An interesting and often entertaining concept that at least suggests how Vermeer may have worked, but it ultimately confuses mechanics with artistic creation.

The Story: After stealing $10 million from a drug cartel, the members of an elite DEA task force start turning up dead. The Lowdown: An idiotically plotted, unlikable, laborious action movie that’s both tasteless and boring.

In Brief: Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for his portrayal of Truman Capote in this biographical drama centered around Capote researching and writing In Cold Blood. It's certainly a good performance, and it's housed in a good, but never quite great, film. It is also a very chilly affair, and it's much easier to…

In Brief: This year's Asheville Jewish Film Festival runs four Thursdays in April (with matinees on following Fridays). The opening night film is the heartwarming documentary, Dancing in Jaffa. The film features professional ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine pursuing his dream of returning to his native city of Jaffa to teach the both Jewish and Palestinian…

In Brief: World Cinema kicks off its monthlong retrospective on the works of the late Alian Resnais with the film that not only started it all for Resnais but marked the beginning of the entire French New Wave, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959). On its simplest level, the film is about the affair between a French…

The Story: A self-proclaimed nymphomaniac tells her life story — assuming she's not making it up — to a sympathetic listener who finds her lying unconscious in an alley. The Lowdown: Yes, it's as sexually explicit as you've probably heard, but I don't think eroticism is what von Trier's latest is about. Vol. 1 is…

The Story: A long-grieving widow falls in love with a man who looks exactly like her husband. The Lowdown: A fairly ridiculous story with an uneven tone and improbable plot twists is turned into something far better than it has any right to be by the sensitive playing of stars Annette Bening and Ed Harris…

In Brief: Possibly Josef von Sternberg's greatest film — and certainly Marlene Dietrich's most luminous one — Shanghai Express is a work that manages to transform what is basically a pulp adventure and trashy romance story into absolute cinematic gold. It ought to be a trifle, but it is instead a poetic, dreamlike, intensely moving…

The Story: A young man at a gay cruising spot becomes obsessively involved with a man he knows is a murderer. The Lowdown: A deliberately paced thriller of the neo-noir kind that effectively builds a steady sense of unease. However, viewers need to be aware that the film contains graphic gay sexual encounters.

The Story: Mystical, fantasized retelling of the Bible story of Noah's Ark. The Lowdown: It most certainly doesn't all work, but Darren Aronofsky's visionary take on the Bible story is still an amazing work — as much for its flaws as for its virtues. It may miss greatness, but it sure makes a valiant try…

The Story: Big screen follow-up (seven years later) to the cult TV series. The Lowdown: Despite hints of something greater and an engaging performance by Kristen Bell, this is really for fans of the show. Otherwise, it's strictly OK.

The Story: A man discovers he has an exact double and decides to meet him. The Lowdown: Claustrophobic, psychological horror is the order of the day with Enemy, a film that will appeal mostly to cineastes in search of the unusual and the unsettling.

In Brief: Yasujirô Ozu's Good Morning (1959) is typical of the filmmaker's work in that it looks, rather disapprovingly, at the growing westernization of post-war Japan. But Good Morning — with its story of two boys refusing to speak until their father buys a TV set — is slighter, warmer and more accepting than most…

In Brief: Edgar G. Ulmer's (yes, the same guy who made the 1934 The Black Cat) Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) is lacking in both budget and sense. It somehow manages to not only confuse Mr. Hyde with a werewolf, but it comes up with the screwy idea that a drug-induced monster could be an…

In Brief: Federico Fellini's first film The White Sheik (1952) is often brushed aside as a minor work — almost as if it wasn't a "real" Fellini movie at all. That's too bad, because this relatively simple comedy about a honeymoon gone wrong when the wife sneaks off just to meet her hero, The White…

In Brief: Orson Welles' most financially successful (and therefore least admired) film, The Stranger is a fairly straightforward suspense thriller — but it's a suspense thriller that only Welles could make. Its hero is a Nazi hunter (Edward G. Robinson) who's obsessed to the point of being a little unbalanced. Its villain is an unregenerate…

The Story: The Muppets are unknowingly entangled in an international art theft after Kermit the Frog is mistaken for a master criminal and thrown in prison. The Lowdown: A harmless little movie that exists solely for diehard Muppet fans and is more cute than entertaining.