Calling It’s All True a documentary is really a bit wide of the mark, since the centerpiece of the film is an assemblage of the extant footage of the Four Men on a Raft section of the aborted 1941 Orson Welles’ project, It’s All True, but I’m not really sure what else to call this. […]
By a happy coincidence, I saw this film the same day I happened to watch Mervyn LeRoy’s 1931 pre-Code (read: before the Production Code emasculated movies for 30 years) newspaper melodrama, Five Star Final. The two movies have nothing in common, but there’s a scene in the LeRoy film where newspaperman Ziggie Feinstein outlines his […]
Before getting down to the specifics of this inoffensive but thoroughly inessential offering from Dreamworks Animation, I want to make an open plea to filmmakers everywhere: Let’s lay off the Chariots of Fire parodies and quit slapping Louis Armstrong’s recording of “What a Wonderful World” on soundtracks. The first is just no longer funny (if […]
“When America was on its knees, he brought us to our feet,” claims the tag line for Ron Howard’s Depression-era drama about boxer James Braddock (Russell Crowe). Resisting the fact that I know there’s a rude gag in there somewhere, I’ll concede that the claim pretty much sums up the approach Howard takes with Cinderella […]
Fans — especially the more hardcore variety — should just add one-and-a-half stars to my rating of this supposedly final installment in the Star Wars saga and move on. I’m not a card-carrying Star Warvian (or whatever the Star Wars equivalent to a Trekkie is), but I did like a good many things about the […]
Speaking as the guy who wrote the chapter on Edward D. Wood Jr. for a book entitled The Sleaze Merchants (my work only appears in the classiest tomes, you understand), I’m glad to see Asheville getting a dose of the peculiar delights of Ed Wood-style cinema. And those delights don’t come any more peculiar than […]
Yes, this film is French and it’s subtitled. These combined factors are apt to play against Agnes Jaoui’s second film, Look at Me, when it hits town this week, but I find myself asking why this should be. Asheville has a pretty darned savvy set of moviegoers, but from what I’ve seen in the past […]
The pity of a movie like this one is that the people most in need of seeing it are the very people who won’t. They’ll brand it as “liberal agenda” propaganda and head off to see Star Wars, where the liberal agenda is washed clean in a sea of severed limbs and falls on ears […]
This movie has made my list of the top 10 most preposterous movies ever made, which isn’t to say that it’s not entertaining, in its way, merely that it’s … well, preposterous. Of course, that’s not entirely unexpected, given that the movie is the work of producer/writer Luc Besson and director Louis Leterrier, who last […]
This unusual film is the only movie scheduled for this season of Cinema in the Park, a free “series” of showings in downtown Asheville, and it’s certainly an interesting choice. Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 The Adventures of Prince Achmed holds the distinction of being the first feature-length animated film — having preceded Disney’s Snow White and […]
No, this is not very good movie. But it’s only fair to point out that those who say they’re outraged about this tricked-out splatter movie being a travesty of the 1939 Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None, seem to have overlooked the fact that Dame Agatha wasn’t being terribly original herself. The novel’s […]
The title of this spectacularly unfunny Will Ferrell flick is an apt description of what I felt like doing when I learned I’d be watching it. OK, I admit it — I don’t “get” Will Ferrell. Sure, Elf was a pleasant surprise, and Ferrell deserves a nod for tackling a more serious role in Woody […]
Imaginary Heroes was the opener at last year’s Asheville Film Festival, where it went down quite well with the audience. The film, which has been in (limited) theatrical release since February, has finally made it back to the area. This is not a great movie, by any means, but it is an always-interesting one — […]
Writer Nicholas Meyer’s 1979 directorial debut is probably still his best film. Time after Time boasts a likeably cheeky conceit that’s in the same vein as his novel, The Seven Percent Solution, a clever screenplay and three very strong central performances. Malcolm McDowell stars as H.G. Wells, but not quite the historical Wells, since the […]
It’s 1949 in France. The country is recovering from the Nazi nightmare, yet its survivors often imitate the worst attributes of the invader. Thousands of children are orphaned or raised in fatherless homes. The careers of many adults are irretrievably interrupted, the hopes of an entire generation dashed forever. Fond de L’Etang (literally translated as […]
Before someone decides to lambaste me for giving this fairly by-the-numbers comedy a four-star rating, I’d like to point out that there’s a basic shortcoming to the whole star rating system: It doesn’t take into account the necessity of a sliding scale based on the type of film and the intentions behind it. Someone once […]
So does Orlando Bloom really wear a chest toupee in Kingdom of Heaven? Beats me — since it appears that most of his much-discussed shirtless scenes fell to the cutting room floor before the film made it to theaters. According to press reports, director Ridley Scott found Bloom’s bedroom scenes with Eva Green (The Dreamers) […]
Sure, any movie that subjects Paris Hilton to a spectacularly gruesome death can’t be all bad. (Call me old-fashioned, but I think “celebrity” status ought to be built on more than having a lot of money and a knack for drawing attention to yourself — mostly in the horizontal position.) All the same, House of […]
This unassuming little Scottish film from first-time director Shona Auerbach (who also photographed the movie) played at the unlikely hour of 11 a.m. on a Sunday as an out-of-competition entry at last year’s Asheville Film Festival, and is just now making its limited theatrical rounds. Unfortunately, the fact that it has no big name stars […]
Writer Paul Haggis’ directorial debut is obviously intended to be an important film, but I’d be much more inclined to accept that it is one if Crash didn’t have “Oscar Bait” written all over it. As with Haggis’ screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, this movie insists on announcing its significance at every turn, to such […]
“You’re the new ‘Triple X,’” Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) informs Darius Stone (Ice Cube) after arranging the hotheaded Stone’s jailbreak. “Sounds like a porno star,” sneers Stone. If that level of witty repartee — rarely heard since the demise of Oscar Wilde — convulses you with laughter, then xXx: State of the Union […]
