Author:   Ken Hanke

Showing 442-462 of 5225 results
Starring: Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Pettersson

The Virgin Spring

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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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…
Starring: Ben Mendelsohn, Ryan Reynolds, Sienna Miller, Robin Weigert, Alfre Woodard, Analeigh Tipton

Mississippi Grind

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Two gamblers team up for a road trip to a big game in New Orleans. The Lowdown: Edging close to greatness, this is a very good — albeit rather sad — character study about friendship, addiction and the hope for redemption — or the next closest thing. The performances of Ben Mendelsohn and…
Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristin Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Donald Glover

The Martian

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Matt Damon as a man stranded on Mars fighting for survival and hoping for a rescue.  The Lowdown: A grandly entertaining film on every level. It's smart, funny, suspenseful, clever and beautifully acted. Is it profound? Not really, but it's such great entertainment that it hardly matters.
Starring: Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer, Ving Rhames, Bill Cobbs, Kelly Jo Minter

The People Under the Stairs

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show's second film in their tribute to Wes Craven is his often-overlooked and undervalued (and most political) film, The People Under the Stairs (1991). Because of their already-somewhat-outsider — even disreputable — status, it’s not that uncommon to find horror films pretty fearless in what they’ll explore in terms of subtext. Distributors…
Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Daniel Kaluuya, Jon Bernthal

Sicario

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A naive FBI agent is thrust into the corrupt world of the drug wars. The Lowdown: Despite being well-made and well-acted (and all the art house accolades it has received), this is essentially just another violent crime drama straining — and failing — to be a significant statement.
Starring: Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai, Toor Pekai Yousafzai, Khushal Yousafzai, Atal Yousafzai

He Named Me Malala

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Straightforward, informational documentary on Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in her native Pakistan. The Lowdown: At once solid — as concerns the basic story — and disappointingly insubstantial — as concerns creating a portrait of its famous subject. It's mostly a thumbnail sketch, made reasonably worthwhile by the…

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler July 29-August 4: Mission Infinitely Polar Vacation Lego Experiment — and More

Posted on by Ken Hanke

In Theaters. It started out as a simple week — two mainstream titles (including one potential juggernaut) and three art titles. Then one of the titles (the less likely) decided it needed a Wednesday opening for reasons that are anybody’s guess, since neither the date, nor the movie is special. Oh, but it didn’t end […]

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler September 2-8: A Refueled Mistress America Walk in the Machine

Posted on by Ken Hanke

Art films aside, just how bad is the current crop of movies? Well, when you consider that Jurassic World, Inside Out, Pixels, Southpaw, and Dope are all being re-released this week, you know things are grim. (No, this does not mean all of those films are opening locally. At this point, the only one I know that’s coming here is Inside Out.) That said, there’s one very bright spot in the local mix on the art front.

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, John Saxon, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, Amanda Wyss

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show starts its two-film tribute to the late Wes Craven with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), one of the classics of the modern horror film — and one of those that holds up best. It’s a film of surprising complexity — especially given its subtext about the fallout…
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre, Marie Dubois

Jules et Jim

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Along with Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) is probably the essential French New Wave film — and it’s possibly even more essential than Breathless, since it had a greater impact on content. Where Godard’s film was essential in defining the style of the New Wave movement, Truffaut’s defined both style and theme…
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz, Daryl Sabara

The Green Inferno

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: South American cannibal tribe eats American environmentalists. The Lowdown: Trashy, boring, stupid — and on the fast track to worst movie of 2015.
Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Adam Scott

Sleeping with Other People

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Modern romance in classic terms with two characters who decide to be "just friends." The Lowdown: Smart, lively, funny, raunchy, blessed with two terrific leads and a writer-director with real style. The downside? It can't entirely escape its rom-com tendencies.
Starring: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Margo

Lost Horizon

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Even in the early 1970s, when I was in high school and was really keen on Frank Capra because of his then-recent (and none-too-reliable, I later realized) autobiography, The Name Above the Title, I was never as fond of his Lost Horizon (1937) as I was supposed to be. Seeing it on a…
Starring: (Voices) Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade

Hotel Transylvania 2

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Dracula tries to bring out the vampire in his half-human grandson. The Lowdown: If you saw the first film, you know what to expect. It's a largely bland, extremely frantic animated horror comedy aimed at kids and Adam Sandler completists.
Starring: Albert Finney, Brenda Fricker, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Tara Fitzgerald, David Kelly

A Man of No Importance

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Suri Krishnamma’s A Man of No Importance (1994) is one of those marvelous little movies that almost no one knows. It came out on VHS and laserdisc and was played frequently on the Sundance Channel back in the 1990s (with the unenticing plot synopsis, “A Dublin bus conductor tries to stage Oscar Wilde’s Salome in 1963”) and…
Starring: Joseph Cotten, Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Wilfrid Hyde White

The Third Man

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: In keeping with the practice of bringing newly restored classic films to Asheville, the Asheville Film Society has booked the brand new 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) for one show only on Wed., Sept. 30. Judging by the eye-popping quality of these restorations, I fully expect this version to be revelatory…
Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Ki Hong Lee, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Giancarlo Esposito, Patricia Clarkson. Aidan Gillen

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Continuation of the events laid out in The Maze Runner.  The Lowdown: Effective, quirky and even downright strange, this sequel overcomes a bumpy start to become a minor delight of the fall season.
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Vinnie Jones, Roger Bart

The Midnight Meat Train

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Apart from having what is perhaps the greatest title ever, it’s quite a treat to see that the film itself not only lives up to that title, but even lives up to the trailer’s claim that director Kitamura is “visionary.” (If I had a nickel for every nonvisionary “visionary” who’s come down the pike…
Starring: W.C. Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Una Merkel, Jessie Ralph, Franklin Pangborn, Grady Sutton, Russell Hicks

The Bank Dick

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Often cited as W.C. Fields' best movie — or at least as the equal to 1934's It's a Gift — The Bank Dick (1940) is probably the purest expression of the great comedian's humor. Fields himself wrote the screenplay — under the preposterous name of Mahatma Kane Jeeves (a groan-worthy pun if ever there was one)…