Movie Reviews

The Story: Original "Bad Santa" Willie Soke returns for more misanthropic holiday high jinks, this time with his malicious mother in tow. The Lowdown: An unnecessary sequel to a film that should've been allowed to stand on its own, Bad Santa 2 falls short of its potential — if not of reasonable expectations.

In Brief: When the AFS showed the original Godzilla last year, I brought a date who called it the worst movie she had ever seen. We are no longer on the best of terms, and needless to say, she will not be invited to our screening of Gamera. While it's not a great film in the classical sense of…

In Brief: François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973) is not only a great movie about movies, but it’s fascinating as an example of how international cinema truly is. By this I mean that while we think of foreign film as a separate world, Day for Night is clearly the kind of movie that could only have…

In Brief: It wasn't that long ago that Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin — then known mostly as Potemkin — was in the top five of nearly all lists of the greatest films ever made. While the 1925 Soviet film seems to have been downgraded in recent years, it remains an essential of cinematic literacy, one…

The Story: A white man and a black woman in the Jim Crow South fight to preserve their family in the face of overwhelming odds, eventually taking their case to the Supreme Court and changing the course of civil rights history. The Lowdown: Deeply affective and masterfully expressed, Loving is an expertly crafted recounting of a crucial, if somewhat under-examined,…

The Story: A young Iraq War soldier reflects on his heroism and that of his comrades when their story is turned into a patriotic stage spectacle by groups wanting to both celebrate and exploit their service. The Lowdown: More than just a story about war, and the terrific ensemble cast forces audiences to grapple with difficult answers…

The Story: An introverted teen girl struggles to cope with her older brother's romantic interest in her best friend while her life seemingly crumbles around her. The Lowdown: Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig crafts a funny and affective portrayal of the pitfalls of female adolescence that transcends its genre trappings.

The Story: Magizoologist Newt Scamander must fight against opposition both ambiguous and overt in his quest to recover lost specimens from his mystical menagerie. The Lowdown: This Harry Potter-adjacent franchise-builder falls far short of being a Magical Mystery tour-de-force.

The Story: A cocky boxer ends up paralyzed in a car crash and is determined to enter the ring once more. The Lowdown: A generic, based-on-a-true-story tale of overcoming odds (and such) that works reasonably well but is nothing to get excited about.

In Brief: By the time Charles Chaplin wrote, directed, produced and starred in the first feature-length production entirely under his own control, he was already the most famous movie star on Earth. Chaplin, being Chaplin, stuck with the formula that made his earlier short films so successful, but turned the heartstring tugging up to 11. Semi-autobiographically…

The Story: A young black man growing up in a Miami housing project must struggle with his sexual identity as the world around him threatens to break his spirit. The Lowdown: A remarkably affective tale with ramifications that reach far beyond its subject, Moonlight is a must-see.

The Story: When mysterious alien spacecraft appear on Earth, one woman must learn to communicate with the visitors before humanity turns on them and destroys itself in the process. The Lowdown: Engaging and provocative, Arrival contributes a welcome touch of intellectualism to science fiction filmmaking.

The Story: Following the death of her husband (and police suspicion regarding her involvement), a Wiccan relocates to a small California town looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong ways. The Lowdown: A lovingly conceived pastiche of low-budget, late-1970s horror films, The Love Witch is a great idea poorly executed.

The Story: A widowed patriarch welcomes his out-sized, specifically dysfunctional family for the holidays. The Lowdown: Generic, flat and bloated with characters and plot, here's a holiday movie that only goes as far as its likable cast takes it.

The Story: A child psychologist must find a way to rescue a young boy while isolated in her New England home by a deadly ice storm. The Lowdown: A flat, unoriginal thriller, with a good performance from Naomi Watts, that relies too much on its goofy twist ending.

In Brief: The Asheville Film Society wraps up its November schedule with a staggeringly strange avant-garde triple-feature that should establish to absolutely anyone's satisfaction that modern experimental filmmakers will never hold a candle to the masters. First up we recreate the original 1929 double bill of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's seminal statement on Surrealism in cinema, the…

In Brief: It helps to understand the realities of life in post-War Italy to understand the birth of Italian Neo-Realism — something born as much from economic necessity as an artistic movement. Films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thieves (1948) were partly made simply because they were possible in a country where money was…

In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show is serving Grade-A turkey this week with Fred F. Sears’ deliriously dreadful The Giant Claw. To give some barometer of its quality, consider that it was released in June of 1957, and even though Sears died in November of that same year, in the intervening five months he…

In Brief: I've never been a fan of musicals, and A Chorus Line provides about as good an explanation as I can give as to why. Favoring style over substance yet somehow achieving neither, Richard Attenborough's 1985 adaptation of one of the longest-running and most successful stage musicals of all time seems to have missed the appeal of the…

The Story: Love and betrayal complicate a young thief's aspirations when a ploy to con a wealthy heiress out of her fortune is complicated by a forbidden romance. The Lowdown: Scintillating, sexy and seriously strange, Park Chan-wook's latest film is a departure for the director and a delight for audiences.