I’d like to start this review by offering my apologies to my viewing partner. Granted, he didn’t see but the last 45 minutes, but he did make it in time to see the movie’s “big” musical number. Never have I seen a human being in such a state of slack-jawed disbelief, and I fear he […]
Well, if nothing else, at 109 minutes, T3 is a lot shorter than its immediate behemoth predecessor. I don’t even know that I think Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a lot worse than the first two films, but they were never my dish of tea to begin with. I can see, however, that […]
Had I been aware that the much-praised Whale Rider had received more “audience favorite” awards at film festivals than any film since Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, I would have approached it with diminished expectations, and might have enjoyed it more. At least I would have known it was essentially a “feel-good” movie for the […]
It has perhaps the worst title in the history of film (“Hey, is this the sequel to the Sandra Bullock movie?”). It occasionally suffers from the inherent limitations of shooting on digital video. The script has a couple of problems. And it’s undeniably derivative of a raft of earlier movies. But all that said, Danny […]
It’s big, loud, dumb, colorful and largely incoherent – and, I’m ashamed to say, entertaining. On any serious level, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle has virtually nothing to recommend it, beyond glossy Hollywood professionalism. In short, it’s junk. But there’s garbage and then there’s playfully amusing garbage — and about 90 percent of this film is […]
Move over, Mariah Carrey, there’s a new kid in town, and she’s got a movie that out-Glitters Glitter. Almost two years ago, 20th Century Fox gave the musical film a badly needed shot in the arm by releasing Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!. As if determined to undo not only all the good they did, but […]
You were expecting maybe Crouching Bixby, Hidden Ferrigno? Blessedly — and despite a cameo by Ferrigno as a security guard and variants on “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” — this film is about as far removed from the campy TV show as you’re likely to get. Viewed strictly from the standpoint of a […]
This movie has more alternate titles than Liz Taylor has last names: Pikachu Movie 5, Pokemon 5, Pokemon Heroes: Latias and Latios or (my favorite) Guardian Spirits of the Water Capital: Latias and Latios. By any name, though, it’s another Pokemon movie. And I found it no better or worse than any of the others. […]
No, it’s not a remake of the Hitchcock film, though it does have suspense aplenty — even if it’s not the kind you might expect, and maybe not the kind first-time filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz intended. I’m not sure whether anyone watching Spellbound is likely to care too much about who wins the spelling bee at […]
There’s some slight chance that I liked The Man on the Train (L’Homme du Train) more than I might have simply because I saw it about 30 minutes after my potentially life-threatening exposure to From Justin to Kelly. This is just the sort of movie Kelly Clarkson thinks critics are supposed to like; it’s probably […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Having seen the original Dumb and Dumber, I harbored the same kind of enthusiasm for the further cinematic adventures of Harry and Lloyd that I would have evidenced had someone announced a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis reunion. The problem is we don’t even get the Dean and Jerry of the original; we […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Yeah, it’s pretty bad, though not unwatchably so. Hollywood Homicide is not without its entertainment value, though a lot of that comes in the form of “What were they thinking?” It’s easy to see why this film went down badly with test audiences; what’s maybe not so easy to figure is […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark accomplishes the not inconsiderable feat of being both fascinating and tedious at the same time. Conceptually, the film is brilliant. Technically, it’s a marvel. Dramatically, it’s about as much fun as an evening with an insurance salesman. By now you probably know the idea: a film in […]
2 Fast 2 Furious — and 2 hours of my life I won’t get back. I sustained hope for this sequel to the immensely popular The Fast and the Furious when I learned it had been directed by John Singleton. But from the moment the Universal Pictures globe transformed into a wheel being changed on […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Anyone going to Neil La Bute’s The Shape of Things expecting a film in the mold of his 2002 offering, Possession, is in for a shock — and perhaps a disappointment. The expansive, literary-minded, good-humored, and utterly romantic Possession is worlds away from The Shape of Things — a film La […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke While I have nothing particularly against the horror sub-sub-genre that dotes on the dire doings of inbred hillbilly cannibals (which probably goes back to the H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Picture in the House”), my initial reaction to Wrong Turn is that it makes Rob Zombie’s defiantly odd House of 1000 […]
With X2: X-Men United I’m faced with a potentially thorny problem, causing me to offer what amounts to two reviews in one. The first and by far easier review concerns the movie on wholly a surface level, as a rousing action-adventure comic-book blockbuster. On that score, X2 is that rarest of rarities: the sequel that […]
Contrary to popular belief, Christopher Guest did not invent the “mockumentary.” His classic claim to fame, This Is Spinal Tap, came about in 1984; the Eric Idle-Neil Innes The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash first aired in 1978. Math isn’t my strong suit, but that appears to me to be six years earlier. And, […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Since Jim Carrey has gone on record saying that if he indeed did have God’s powers, he would send everyone who didn’t like The Majestic to hell, I guess I’m lucky he’s not so emboldened. And while I liked Bruce Almighty better than I liked The Majestic, I suspect my feelings […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke When Down With Love works — which it does almost all the time — it’s because it’s not condescending. This charming brainchild of TV writers Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake (The Nanny, Maggie Winters) and director Peyton Reed (local trivia: he’s from Raleigh) is part spoof and part homage. Reed has […]
How is it possible not to like a horror flick that boasts characters named after those in Marx Brothers movies? How can someone who grew up on late-night horror double-features not be drawn to a movie that starts with a snowy image on a TV screen of Boris Karloff in James Whale’s The Old Dark […]
