Movie Reviews

The Story: A young woman involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility is convinced that a violent stalker has infiltrated the staff to torment her, but her assertions are disregarded as the ravings of a lunatic. The Lowdown: A Sam Fuller sendup shot on a cellphone, Soderbergh’s latest is a shockingly effective piece of pulp exploitation cinema.

The Story: Though the Kaiju are gone, intrepid Jaeger pilots face a new threat in the form of drones that are not what they appear to be. The Lowdown: Lacking the passion and playful originality of its predecessor, this sequel is a bloated exercise in redundancy.

The Story: After a series of disappearances in the world of garden ornaments, the world's most famous gnome detective is called in to crack the case. The Lowdown: A drab retread of an animated film that wastes a talented cast.

The Story: A teenage girl, suffering from a rare condition that makes her deathly allergic to sunlight, meets the boy of her dreams and has to choose between the isolated life she's always known and following her dreams of falling in love. The Lowdown: Like a live-action and weirdly insensitive version of that sun level…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show makes its triumphant return this week at The Black Cloud in West Asheville with a film as polarizing as it is traumatic: Shinya Tsukamoto's seminal classic of Japanese cyberpunk body horror, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Playing something like early Lynch by way of Cronenberg with a dose of Aronofsky on speed,…

In Brief: I'm not one to go in for '90s nostalgia, but thinking back to a time when I didn't have to hear about Donald Trump's illicit affairs with porn stars does have its appeal. The '90s were also a time when I still thought Luc Besson was cool — instead of a talentless, plagiarizing pervert with a thing…

In Brief: A remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne (1931) — itself based on a play of the same name by Georges de la Fouchardiere, which was based on the book by André Mouezy-Eon — is easily the darkest and most psychologically bleak of Fritz Lang's American output, which, almost by default, places it high…

The Story: Stalin's underlings vie for power in the wake of the dictator's death. The Lowdown: An uncompromisingly dark comedy with a bravura cast that expertly wields farce and satire to elucidate the inadequacies of government in general and totalitarianism in particular.

The Story: When cool, confident and closeted teen Simon is threatened with being outed to the whole school, he goes to complicated lengths to keep his secret while falling in love with another closeted stranger. The Lowdown: A sweet, sincere and attentive film about young love and friendship that passes the Howard Hawks test and…

The Story: A newly elected official in England's National Health Service throws a celebratory party, but revelations from her husband throw the proceedings into chaos. The Lowdown: A sophisticated satire skewering intellectual pomposity through expertly crafted characters portrayed by a top-notch cast.

The Story: A reissued, remastered version of the 2002 concert celebrating the life of George Harrison. The Lowdown: A star-studded concert film that suffers a bit due to unevenness and being strictly for fans.

The Story: Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels march toward the creation of their Communist Manifesto. The Lowdown: A generally stuffy biopic that's strangely structured like too many biopics, leading to a movie that's surprisingly unsurprising.

The Story: An heiress goes on a hunt for her missing father, leading her into a dangerous quest to uncover the lost tomb of a mythical queen. The Lowdown: A thoroughly uninspired and redundant reboot of films based on a defunct video game franchise that serves no ostensible purpose and fails to deliver even the mindless fun its…

The Story: The (more or less) true story of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv that led to a seven-day hostage standoff in Uganda. The Lowdown: While stylish in places, the film flops in every conceivable way in tackling weighty philosophical elements against one of the most divisive political situations…

The Story: A biopic of Bart Millard, lead singer of Christian rock band Mercy Me, who survived an abusive upbringing to go on to write one of the biggest Christian rock singles ever recorded. The Lowdown: Or at least that's what they'd like you to believe.

In Brief: If anyone ever asks why Federico Fellini is one of the greats of filmmaking, all that should be necessary is to direct them to his 1973 film, Amarcord. (If that fails, I suppose you might try 8 1/2 (1963), and if that fails, give up trying to reason with them.) Amarcord and 8…

In Brief: While I may not find myself among the target demographic for this biopic about the world's worst opera singer, even I found it to be a largely entertaining diversion. It may not be my favorite of director Stephen Frears’ films, but it’s in the top 10 (if not the top five), and is an undeniably…

In Brief: My love for Alejandro Jodorowsky is difficult to overstate, and it all started with El Topo (1970). I'm not alone in that — John Lennon and George Harrison were early advocates of Jodorowsky's surrealist Kabbalistic Western — and there's good reason that it became the first true midnight movie, playing daily for over a year to perpetually…

The Story: Two wealthy teenage girls in a Connecticut suburb reconnect after years apart, but their strange friendship leads to a murder plot. The Lowdown: A pitch-black satire wrapped in the trappings of teen angst and film noir. Have you heard this one? A narcissist and a sociopath walk into a mansion ...

The Story: The night before their daughter leaves for boarding school, a family is terrorized by a trio of sadistic killers. The Lowdown: The best type of needless 10-years belated sequel that gets right down to its grisly business without stepping on its own feet (that pesky colon in the title notwithstanding).

The Story: Aliens staging an invasion of Earth attempt to understand the human experience so they can more efficiently take over the planet. The Lowdown: Sci-fi meets black comedy in a bizarre film that somehow manages to blend its tones effectively as it meanders through a lengthy narrative.