Movie Reviews

In Brief: It's finally the makeup showing of the canceled The Frozen Ghost (1945) starring Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better Inner Sanctum mysteries. This time it's paired with the full-tilt nonsense of the delightfully silly Mysterious Mr. Wong starring Bela Lugosi in the title role, Mr. Wong — a criminal mastermind matching…

In Brief: Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) has been shown by World Cinema before, so the real story here is the screening of this year's winner for Best Short Film at Twin Rivers Media Festival, John Hellberg's Mousse. This is a charming and quirky, fairly long (40 minutes) short that details a robbery gone wrong…

In Brief: Playwright and sometimes filmmaker Herb Gardner brings his play I'm Not Rappaport to the screen with Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis in the leads. The first hour of its rather too expansive running time is very good indeed, if not especially great filmmaking. Matthau and Davis make an appealing pair of old men…

In Brief: Like a wonderful time capsule, Whoopee! offers us a glimpse into a world that hasn't existed for a very long time: the 1920s Broadway theater. Almost no one who was a part of that world is still with us, and even those who might have seen such a show are seriously diminished in…

In Brief: Since the closing film of the Asheville Film Festival was not available for review, these comments are merely drawn from the film's press notes: "Defiant Requiem tells the little-known story of the Nazi concentration camp, Terezin. Led by imprisoned conductor Rafael Schächter, the inmates of Terezin fought back...with art and music. Through hunger,…

The Story: A working-class guy meets his girlfriend's upper-class family. Predicability ensues. The Lowdown: An energetic cast can do little to elevate this by-the-numbers, flat comedy that plays like a sitcom.

The Story: Fact-based drama about the campaign to overthrow Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet at the ballot box — and the marketing campaign that made it happen. The Lowdown: Funny, suspenseful, compelling entertainment that may only tell part of its historical story, but does so brilliantly.

The Story: Film version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. The Lowdown: A big, daring, audacious interpretation of the novel that brings it to life in ways you probably never dreamed possible. It's every inch a Baz Luhrmann film, so that will probably tell you a lot. You may not like it, but I'm calling…

The Story: Two small-time graffiti artists concoct a plan to tag the large, mechanized apple at the Mets’ Citi Field, but must scrounge up $500 to make it happen. The Lowdown: A small, natural-feeling indie flick with a ton of heart.

In Brief: One of the most stylish and effective of all early horror talkies, Svengali is a perfect blend of atmosphere, writing and a towering performance by star John Barrymore in one of his two or three best performances. The story, taken from George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, had already been filmed a half-dozen…

Not that Jacques Tati’s films were ever exactly mainstream successes in the U.S., his final theatrical feature, Trafic (1971), fared worse than most. I’m not sure why, but a couple of things do come into play. The first is that while Tati is still playing his traditional Monsieur Hulot character — the tan raincoat, the…

In Brief: Sophisticated comedy with Myrna Loy as the rich society girl who sues a newspaper for libel, Spencer Tracy as the beleagured managing editor, William Powell as a sharp former reporter who knows all the angles and Jean Harlow as Tracy's long-suffering fiancée. The plan is that Powell will marry Harlow, then seduce Loy…

In Brief: While it may be faulted for being the film that domesticated Cary Grant — and that it owes a lot to George Washington Slept Here — there's no denying that Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is an entertaining picture with a cast that most movies would kill to have. It's the basic…

The Story: Biographical drama about the aged painter, his future filmmaker son and the young woman who inspired them both during the summer of 1915. The Lowdown: An almost impossibly beautiful-looking film — one so visually arresting that it more than makes up for the leisurely nature of its approach. Actually, the story itself is…

The Story: At the end of World War II, the children of a Nazi officer must make their way, by themselves, across occupied Germany. The Lowdown: An occasionally ugly, emotionally detached film that scores points for its complexity and ability to never cop out.

The Story: Three interconnected and intercut stories about the perils of our modern Internet and cellphone-addicted world. The Lowdown: No topic may be more timely than the dehumanizing effects of our supposedly connected society, but making it into drama is a risky proposition — one that this effective film largely overcomes through strong characters and…

The Story: Tony Stark (Iron Man) does battle with a terrorist super criminal — sort of. The Lowdown: It's big. It's noisy. And it's mostly a dull mess that's marginally saved by its star. Very marginally.

In Brief: If you've only ever seen Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001) on a TV screen, you really haven't seen Moulin Rouge! at all. This is a movie that needs to be seen in a theater on the biggest screen possible — and that's just what the Asheville Film Society is offering with this month's…

In Brief: The Blue Angel (1930) marked not only the first German sound film, but, more importantly, the meeting of filmmaker Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. It remains the most well-known of the seven films they made together, but it's hardly the best of the lot — which doesn't keep it from being iconic.…

In Brief: One of the most peculiar movies ever — famous for its quirks and for being written by Roger Ebert — Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is everything you've heard and a little bit more. It's a camp fest (oddly, written and directed by a couple of straight boys) disguised as a cautionary…