This is a slack week for one reason: No one is dumb enough to go up against the latest entry in Fast and Furious series.
Author: Ken Hanke
Showing 673-693 of 5225 results
Serena
The Story: A corrupt timber baron makes a fatal choice in marrying a mysterious woman with a murky past. The Lowdown: Chock-full of melodrama and outrageous contrivances, there's no way to call Serena good, but it's one fascinating hot mess that's entertainingly trashy.
It Follows
The Story: An implacable, nameless monster is passed on like an STD in this original, maybe even brilliant, horror thriller. The Lowdown: Horror fans — and indeed anyone interested in quality independent film — take note, this critically-acclaimed movie is the goods in the world of truly unnerving, but surprisingly nongory, film.
Do You Believe?
The Story: Multistory tale of characters grappling with putting faith into action. The Lowdown: Less hysterical on the topic of religion than its predecessor, God's Not Dead, this is still the same old preaching-to-the-choir stuff — only overstuffed with characters, some better actors but little actual substance.
The Invisible Man’s Revenge
In Brief: Apart from his inevitable encounters with Abbott and Costello, The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944) was the swan song for the Universal "monster" who just never really caught on. James Whale's original The Invisible Man (1933) is one of the key horror classics of all time. The rather tepid, unfocused follow-ups are another matter. The problem seems to…
Raise the Titanic
In Brief: It's the movie that helped drive Lew Grade — or Sir Lew Grade or Lord Grade (depending on where you are in his career) — from the film business. It's also the movie that kept writer Clive Cussler from allowing any of his novels to be filmed for the next 25 years. (He…
The Lady Eve
In Brief: Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve (1941) marked the writer-director’s move into the realm of the full-blown A picture with A-list stars — Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck — and the Paramount high gloss his first two films had lacked. The result was one of Sturges’ most popular films and probably as close as he ever…
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler March 25-31: It Follows Hard Red Serena Home
In Theaters. Now that Insurgent defied its critics, The Gunman tanked, and Do You Believe? underwhelmed, we’re looking at a week of diminished expectations — at least so far as mainstream releases are concerned. Art titles — one of them anyway — may be another matter. What we have here is a kind of holding […]
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler March 4-10: What We Do in the Second Unfinished Chappie Shadows
In Theaters. Four new movies come wafting into town this week. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing mostly remains to be seen. While two of the titles qualify as art/indie, I’ve only seen one of them — and I recommend it. I shall explain. Under normal circumstances, just about anything from […]
Persepolis
In Brief: Pretty amazing film version of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic Persepolis, about an Iranian girl growing up in the shadow of two oppressive regimes. Though playful in tone, it's a narrative that goes much deeper than one might expect. That said, this marks the fourth time this has been shown since the film's 2008 theatrical…
’71
The Story: Following a botched military action in Belfast, a young Brit soldier is left behind to fend for himself as he tries to make it back to his barracks. The Lowdown: Exciting and very effective war thriller set during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. More thriller than political, but very well done.
Cinderella
The Story: Live action version of the Cinderella story. The Lowdown: It looks terrific. It's also faithful to a fault — and that's exactly the problem, since it makes it on the dull, unadventurous side.
Kolberg
In Brief: Kolberg (1945) is famous — or more properly, notorious — as Josef Goebbels' massively expensive propaganda flop. The idea behind this yarn about the town of Kolberg organizing a resistance front to Napoleon's army was that it was going to put the fight back into the German people. Well, not only was it…
Torch Song Trilogy
In Brief: Harvery Fierstein adapts and stars in this film of his hit play. It's often rather simply described as being about "a gay man's search for love." Well, yes, it is that, but it's a lot more. Fierstein plays Arnold Beckoff, an unattached professional drag queen with a history of failed romances that he…
Leviathan
The Story: A lower-middle-class man fights the system to save his land while struggling to hold his already splintered family together. The Lowdown: Grim and deeply pessimistic, the film is nonetheless compelling viewing and deserving of our attention.
It! The Terror from Beyond Space
In Brief: Though it's pretty indefensible as objectively good in any normal sense, It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) is a towering classic of 1950s sci-fi horror cheese. It's more fun, more memorable and certainly more influential than the handful of big-budget sci-fi movies of the era. After all, none of its pricier brethren can lay…
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler March 18-24: Believe Insurgent Leviathan Gunman ’71
In Theaters. This was to be a somewhat more interesting week than it turned out to be (I shall explain). As it finally shakes out we have two mainstream titles, two art titles and one…well, specialty title. You see, we were also supposed to get another art title — or maybe art/specialty title would be […]
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler March 11-17: Cinderella Walks Home Alone All Night
We only get three movies this week. One of them is seemingly much anticipated. One is more likely to be shunned. And the third…goodness knows what you’ll make of it.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Story: Further events with the residents and operators of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The Lowdown: It's not up to the original and probably doesn't need to exist at all, but this follow-up is certainly a fine way to spend a couple of hours with our old friends from the first movie.
Harvey
In Brief: Mary Chase's play Harvey won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for drama, which speaks volumes about the value of a Pulitzer Prize. It is whimsy in its most virulent form — you know, the kind where we are told that crazy people are saner, nicer and better than the rest of us. The formula…
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
The Story: A lone female vampire prowls the nearly deserted streets of Bad City, Iran. The Lowdown: Fascinating, moody, deliberately paced, often compelling — and very odd — take on the vampire genre mixed with the art film. It's also flawed in some serious ways, but on balance, it's certainly worth a look. It's also…