Author:   Ken Hanke

Showing 2122-2142 of 5225 results
Starring: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, James Woods, Dominic Purcell

Straw Dogs

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: A young couple return to the wife's Southern home town and run afoul of the tight-knit, yahoo locals, leading to violence. The Lowdown: A pointless dumbing down of the original movie, which transplants to the present as a witless revenge melodrama.

Sarah’s Key

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: An American journalist in Paris working on a story about WWII France uncovers things about the past involving her husband's family. The Lowdown: A definite film to see -- a richly powerful work with an interesting structure and excellent performanmces -- but also a film with a subplot that detracts from the real…

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler Sept. 14-20: Beats, Rhymes, Keys, Drives, Straw Dogs and more

Posted on by Ken Hanke

Another week of movies is headed our way. This week we get two art titles — Sarah’s Key (The Carolina and Fine Arts) and Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (The Carolina) — and three mainstream ones — Drive, I Don’t Know How She Does It and Straw Dogs. Hopefully, the deserving titles in this set will generate more interest than last week’s did (pleasant weather and the Mountain State Fair did the box office no favors here).

Contagion

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: A new and seemingly unstoppable airborne virus goes global and threatens to wipe out a large portion of the world. The Lowdown: Exciting, engrossing thriller with a solid all-star cast and taut direction. It's not particularly deep, but it works in its own matter-of-fact approach.

The Guard

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: An unorthodox Irish police sergeant with elastic ethics finds himself partnered with the straightest FBI agent imaginable to solve a drug-smuggling case. The Lowdown: Irreverent, vulgar, darkly funny comedy with thrill sequences that sets itself up as standard movie fare -- only to deliver something refreshingly deeper. A must-see.

Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: Back in my day…

Posted on by Ken Hanke

I have a friend who I sometimes think exists mostly to prove—even though he’s a few years my junior—that there are more curmudgeonly folks in the world than I. (Unfortunately, he hasn’t a name that rhymes with anything like “cranky.”) The other day he was celebrating the existence of a highly dubious article on the tanking of summer blockbusters this year (at least five of the films cited were not big-budget flops, just common garden flops). I took issue with this on the basis of factual wobbliness and the fact that a lot of the summer crap is what helps to keep the good stuff viable. The whole thing then escalated into the assertion that it wouldn’t matter to him if they never made another movie, which, of course, served to escalate the argument even more.

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler Sept. 7-13: Art heavy week, confusion heavy schedule

Posted on by Ken Hanke

Apparently just about everyone in the movie-booking world spent Labor Day roasting weenies—or whatever it is that people who have Labor Day off do—and the result of this is that I’m sitting here trying to put together a “Weekly Reeler” with limited information. I know what’s going on at the Fine Arts and I know what art titles are slated for The Carolina and I know the mainstream titles. I know the Fine Arts is opening The Guard and The Carolina is set to open The Devil’s Double and Terri. The “big” releases are Contagion, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star and Warrior. But there are gaps.

The Debt

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: An exploration of the difference between the official version of the story of the three Mossad agents tracking down a Nazi in 1966 and what really happened. The Lowdown: Well cast and solidly made, The Debt is a hard film to fault on any specific grounds, but it's equally hard to get as…

Another Earth

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: A guilt-and-redempton story set against the sci-fi premise of the discovery of a doppelganger Earth. The Lowdown: A brilliant concept that the film seems less inclined to explore than the human drama that accompanies it. The forced indie-production style doesn't help, but the film remains intriguing if not wholly realized.

The Devil’s Double

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: Fictionalized account of the double used by Saddam Hussein's despotic and depraved son, Uday. The Lowdown: It may be based on fact, but The Devil's Double is mostly an entertainingly lurid melodrama of corruption and excess -- but one that is raised a notch by the furious performance of Dominic Cooper in the…

Terri

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on

The Story: The story of an overweight teenager who copes not only with his life, but with the lives of other people. The Lowdown: A charming character study -- though possibly upsetting for those with a candy-colored view of adolescence -- of a misfit and his growing extended family. Human, insightful and surprisingly well crafted.