Movie Reviews

In Brief: Few things could seem so incongruous as writer/director/star Nadine Labaki's 2008 feature debut Caramel, not because of its relatively standard plot surrounding a group of women who patronize a beauty parlor, but because this light romantic dramedy is set in previously war-torn Beirut. Labaki avoids dealing with the religious and political turmoil that engulfed much of Lebanon…

In Brief: The Hendersonville Film Society celebrates National Classical Music Month with a September run of classical-music-themed films. This week the society is bringing back Edgar G. Ulmer’s Carnegie Hall (1947), about which Xpress movie critic Ken Hanke wrote a few years ago: “The silly story — one of those pop music vs. classical music tales — is…

The Story: An exploration of parents with children who are vastly different from themselves. The Lowdown: An emotionally mature, complex and tender look at family.  

The Story:  Somewhere in Europe, circa 18,000 B.C., a young hunter-gatherer must find his way home with the help of an unlikely friend — the first wolf to enter into a symbiotic relationship with humans. The Lowdown: This loosely structured story of the domestication of Canis lupus is a visually spectacular adventure tale that, while clearly geared toward younger…

The Story: A jaded lawyer uncovers a web of conflicting stories and motivations as he tries to keep a convicted murderer — who has confessed to a third killing — off death row. The Lowdown: A decent film were it to come from an average director, but a disappointing miss for acclaimed Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda.

The Story: An Asian-American economics professor meets her boyfriend's family only to discover that he has hidden their extravagant wealth from her, leading to conflict with his disapproving mother and competitors vying for his hand. The Lowdown: A film that makes great strides toward mainstream cinematic inclusivity for ethnically diverse casts and crews while rehashing a tired rom-com…

The Story: An off-the-books intelligence mission goes wrong when the team, headed by Mark Wahlberg, realizes it doesn't have all the pieces of the puzzle. The Lowdown: Berg's and Wahlberg's worship of the military and hatred of nerds continues.

In Brief: Julian Schnabel’s third film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2008), continues his apparent fixation with artists who died in their prime. His first films, Basquiat (1996) and Before Night Falls (2000), were about the graffiti artist-turned-neo-expressionist painter Jean Michel Basquiat (dead of a drug overdose at the age of 27) and Cuban poet and…

In Brief:  An improbable subject becomes a magnificently enjoyable and moving film experience that needs to be seen in director Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010), the story of Britain's King George VI and his attempts — with the help of an unorthodox therapist — to overcome his speech impediment to become the wartime voice of his…

The Story: A black detective cons his way into the good graces of the KKK with the help of a white frontman, dealing a devastating blow to the white supremacist terror organization. The Lowdown: Spike Lee's best film in years is potentially his most cogent commentary on contemporary race relations, striking both a delicate balance between comedy and drama…

The Story: A retired rescue diver runs afoul of a giant prehistoric shark. The Lowdown: The Meh.

The Story: A number of people are brought together by their mutual love of dogs. The Lowdown: Well-meaning, yet fatally overlong, boundlessly cutesy and full of goofy humor that makes for a film that never meshes as a whole piece.

The Story: The Slender Man, summoned from an internet video, abducts and possesses a group of high school friends, forcing them to make a sacrifice that will send him back to the internet. The Lowdown: I actually have no idea what this movie was supposed to be about, but Eighth Grade, Skate Kitchen, and BlacKkKlansman…

In Brief: Judging by the reviews I’ve read for Caché, I am supposed to be blown away by its myriad profundities, its mastery of film, its ability to create tension and so on. I’m not. I’m also supposed to have been shocked — shocked — by a scene of brutal daring unlike anything ever encountered in…

In Brief: Josef von Sternberg belongs in the very top ranks of any list of the greatest filmmakers of all time — and nowhere is this more apparent than in his self-described “relentless excursion into style,” The Scarlet Empress. Bearing the improbable credit that the film is “based on a diary of Catherine II” that was…

The Story: In her last days of eighth grade, a quiet wallflower grapples with anxiety and insecurity. The Lowdown: An impressive debut from writer/director Bo Burnham that packs a surprisingly big heart and a wickedly sardonic wit into classic adolescent cringe-comedy format.

The Story: Japanese composer and activist Ryûichi Sakamoto lives through his music even as throat cancer threatens to terminate his career prematurely. The Lowdown: Documentarian Stephen Nomura Schible presents a compelling portrait of Sakamoto that favors evocative imagery at the expense of biographical detail.

The Story: An adult Christopher Robin tries to reconnect with his wife and young daughter — as well as his inner child — with the help of his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood. The Lowdown: Either an incredibly tepid and ill-considered case of nostalgia exploitation or a fascinating glimpse into Christopher Robin's psychotic break. Probably the…

The Story: Two ordinary friends find themselves entangled in a plot of dangerous, violent international espionage. The Lowdown: While offering some good lead performances and an interesting examination of female friendship, the movie as a whole is simply too mired in cliches to be memorable.

The Story: In the wake of a mysterious epidemic that killed most of the planet's children, the surviving teens must now hide their emerging superpowers before the government hunts them down. The Lowdown: Bare-bones X-Men facsimile combines all the worst elements of recent young adult fantasy franchises.

In Brief: I go back and forth between Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) as to which is my favorite Hayao Miyazaki film. At the moment, I’m leaning toward Spirited Away — perhaps because I just saw it. The film’s story line is fairly complex, especially when you figure that it’s mostly there to hang the…