Movie Reviews

The Story: Paddington becomes embroiled in a mysterious treasure hunt when a deluded actor steals a book the young bear cub intended to purchase as a birthday gift for his beloved aunt. The Lowdown: Atypically palatable children's fair that shows an uncommon degree of respect for its audience as well as its source material.

The Story: A man on a commuter train gets entangled in a mysterious criminal plot that he must unravel. The Lowdown: A watchable, somewhat entertaining thriller with few thrills and nothing exciting about it.

The Story: Mary, a mob assassin who takes in a young boy she made into an orphan, threatens to kick off a full-fledged street war when her motherly instincts turn deadly and she murders the boy's abusive guardian. The Lowdown: Don't lose any sleep worrying about the way things might've been.

In Brief: After my first viewing of Une Femme Mariée (1964), I recall being struck by the fact that it was not so much a strange film as it was a strange film for Godard to have made at the height of his mid-'60s prowess. It's a relatively conventional love triangle, following a repressed married woman whose dalliances with…

In Brief: An early starring turn for Judi Dench and a precursor of things to come for director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Mrs. Brown (1997) is a decidedly offbeat period piece exploring the platonic love affair between Queen Victoria and Scotsman John Brown (Billy Connolly). Dench is characteristically fantastic, and Connolly more than…

In Brief: Some have called Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945) the ultimate example of film noir. While I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, it is unquestionably a tour de force and a nigh-unassailable classic of the genre. A Poverty Row cheapie shot in six days on a practically nonexistent budget, Detour bears all the hallmarks of…

The Story: A overview of the worldwide refugee crisis that travels the globe, attempting to show the true scope and the horror of the situation. The Lowdown: A truly exhausting and massive documentary that attempts to remind us of the human lives behind conflict and politics which, despite some flaws, succeeds.

The Story: The Washington Post's publisher must decide whether or not she will publish the Pentagon Papers at great personal and professional expense.  The Lowdown: Spoiler alert: She does.

The Story: An Olympic skier's plans for law school are derailed when she gets sucked into the lucrative world of high-stakes poker. The Lowdown: The only thing Aaron Sorkin leaves out of his directorial debut is something to be desired.

The Story: Time-hopping from the 1950s to the film's version of the present day, we witness series star Elise grow up and come to grips with her burgeoning powers while years later confronting the truth about her own past during an investigation at the house where she grew up. The Lowdown: While adding little to…

In Brief: Highly regarded, but little loved, Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960) was a title the director himself seems to have had little fondness for. I tend to agree with that. The fact that it was successfully marketed on the exploitation value of its story — rape and revenge — should perhaps tell you that…

In Brief: The Hendersonville Film Society returns this week with Orson Welles' F for Fake (1973), the great filmmaker's last properly completed work. Welles' look at two famous fakes is a playful film — as much a feat of cinematic sleight-of-hand, laced with autobiography as anything else. At the time, Welles thought he'd found a brand-new…

In Brief: An obscure but enjoyable bit of film noir role-reversal, Suddenly (1954) sees Sterling Hayden and Frank Sinatra flip the script slightly. We've all seen Sinatra as the conflicted hero trying to stop an assassination in The Manchurian Candidate, but here he's a deranged psychopath trying to murder the president — and Hayden, having played killers and madmen in movies…

The Story: When the heir to the vast Getty fortune is abducted, his mother must negotiate his release — both with the boy's captors, and with his notoriously penny pinching grandfather who refuses to part with the ransom money. The Lowdown: A compelling story delivered as overblown melodrama, weighed down by a handful of conspicuously weak performances, threadbare…

In Brief: Visionary author H.G. Wells may have vacillated between optimism and cynicism throughout his career as a sci-fi prophet, and both ends of that spectrum are encompassed in his script for Things to Come (1936). adapting from his own essay, Wells paints a bleak picture of a not-to-distant future decimated by war and returned to a primitive…

The Story: A cleaning woman at a government facility falls in love with an amphibious humanoid creature. The Lowdown: Maybe the only true fish-out-of-water story ever committed to celluloid, this heart-wrenching love story is also del Toro's most sincere love letter to cinema — and easily among the best work he's ever produced.

The Story: A middle-class suburbanite undergoes a radical shrinking procedure intended to reduce his environmental impact while concurrently increasing his wealth. The Lowdown: A largely unobjectionable satire that falls short of living up to the potential of its high-concept conceit and the talent of its creators.

The Story: Four high schoolers in detention discover an antiquated video game console that magically transports them into an adventure game that they must complete in order to return to the real world. The Lowdown: Occasionally entertaining and only infrequently stupid.

The Story: The "true life" story of P.T. Barnum and the origins of his famous circus. The Lowdown: A gaudy, garrish musical with nary a memorable tune and a flimsy plot.

The Story: The Bellas, all realizing they're only at their best when they're together, reunite for a European USO tour. The Lowdown: A lot more knife fights and exploding yachts than you might expect, plus some bad covers of boring songs, but still a perfectly acceptable way to kill a couple hours.

The Story: Twin brothers hit the road in search of their biological father. The Lowdown: Mama Mia! by way of Due Date, this farcical road trip barrels past the exit for Comedy Town and gets lost in a quiet backwater called Boredom, USA.