Author:   Ken Hanke

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Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Gaby Hoffmann, Keene McRae, W. Earl Brown

Wild

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Fact-based story of Cheryl Strayed, based on her memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.  The Lowdown: A strong performance from Reese Witherspoon, a solid screenplay by Nick Hornby and assuredly creative direction by Jean-Marc Vallée make Wild a very good movie indeed.
Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley, John Turturro, Sigourney Weaver, Aaron Paul

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: The story of Moses with CGI.  The Lowdown: Theologically dubious, dramatically inert and just plain boring even with all its state-of-the-art effects. And it goes on for two-and-a-half very long hours.

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler December 17-23: Wild Hobbit Annie at the Museum

Posted on by Ken Hanke

In Theaters. And so it begins. The first flood of Christmasiana — clogging theater screens with Hobbits and Ben Stiller, a trickle of singing tots and one art title. And don’t forget, there’ll be another six titles hitting us on Christmas Day. These are perilous times we live in.     Unsurprisingly — especially since […]

Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McElhinney, Daniel Henshall, Barbara West, Benjamin Winspear, Tim Purcell

The Babadook

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A single mother and her son are plagued by a mysterious creature known as Mr. Babadook.  The Lowdown: An absolutely superb horror film that is actually a good bit more than a horror film. Done in a classical formal style, it may remind you of Kubrick's The Shining and the best of Polanski's…
Starring: Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Betsy Blair, Gabriella Pallotta, Dorian Gray, Lynn Shaw

Il Grido

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: As it turned out, Il Grido (1957) marked the end of Michelangelo Antonioni's neorealist period. When he returned in 1960 with L'Avventura, he had pretty completely transformed himself into the introspective, artier, more impenetrable filmmaker we think of as Antonioni. It is perhaps not surprising since that was the same year that Fellini…
Starring: Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, Edward Arnold, Onslow Stevens, William Janney, Robert Barrat

Secret of the Blue Room

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Though Kurt Neumann's Secret of the Blue Room was a hardy — and well-loved — staple of the old Shock Theater TV package, it's really more of an old dark house mystery than an outright horror film. (That's only reasonable, I suppose, since it's partly made on redressed sets from James Whale's 1932 The Old Dark…
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, John Lithgow, James Spader, Meryl Streep

The Homesman

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story:  A self-sufficient frontier woman and the claim-jumper whose life she saves undertake transporting three dangerously unbalanced women back east. The Lowdown: A beautifully made and acted revisionist western — leavened with dark humor — that proves to be one of the year's most compelling films.
Starring: Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, Lloyd Nolan, Jane Darwell, William Frawley, Fred Clark

The Lemon Drop Kid

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: It's become something of a Christmas staple now, but The Lemon Drop Kid was originally not well-received. Why? Well, it's a Christmas movie that came out in April — and it was all Bob Hope's fault. When he saw the finished film — intended for Christmas 1950 — he thought it was weak and needed…
Starring: Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren, Kristofer Hivju, Fanny Metelius

Force Majeure

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Marital drama about what happens in the wake of a threat where the husband shows himself to be less than his wife assumed. The Lowdown: The critics are mostly agreed that this Swedish drama about marital discord and patriarchal dysfunction is great stuff — Sweden has chosen it as its Oscar entry. Maybe…
Starring: Makhouredia Gueye, Ynousse N'Diaye, Isseu Niang, Serigne N'Diayes, Serigne Sow

Mandabi

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Ousmane Sembene’s Mandabi (The Money Order) (1968) is the sort of movie that is much prized by folks suffering from cultural inferiority complexes and by those who dote on the esoteric for its own sake. It’s a movie from Senegal — and is apparently notable for being shot in Wolof (the common language)…
Starring: Gregg Palmer, Allison Hayes, Autumn Russell, Joel Ashley, Morris Ankrum, Marjorie Eaton

Zombies of Mora Tau

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Before the arrival of George Romero’s reinvention of the zombie movie with Night of the Living Dead (1968), schlockmeister Edward L. Cahn’s Zombies of Mora Tau — made for even schlockier producer Sam Katzman — was pretty much the foundation of the zombie sub-genre for an entire generation of horror fans. Oh, it…
Starring: (Voices) Tom McGrath, Chris Miller, Christopher Knights, Conrad Vernon, John Malkovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Werner Herzog

Penguins of Madagascar

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: The Madagascar penguins get a movie of their own in which they match wits with a villainous octopus. The Lowdown: Breakneck paced, filled with rapid-fire gags and wordplay that are impossible to keep up with and blessed with a pleasing lunacy, Penguins of Madagascar mostly works but goes on a little too long.
Starring: Monty Woolley, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Sara Allgood, Melville Cooper, J. Edward Bromberg

Life Begins at Eight-Thirty

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The Asheville Film Society eases into the Christmas season with Life Begins at Eight-Thirty — a film I’m pretty sure most of you have never heard of. It’s something I bumped into about 45 years ago on a long-defunct TV station that kept going by booking generally obscure movies and 1950s TV shows.…
Starring: George Arliss, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Cesar Romero, Douglass Dumbrille

Cardinal Richelieu

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: George Arliss — in his final Hollywood movie — takes on Cardinal Richelieu, and the results are more or less what you expect. In his version of Cardinal Richelieu (1935), the old boy is just as wily as the real one, but he's now become the wily hero of the story. In other…
Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Mir Hossein Noori

Taste of Cherry

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Some movies are leisurely paced. Some are deliberately paced. Still others are glacially paced. They all are on the slow side — in varying degrees. Depending on where you land in it, Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997) covers all the bases of slowness. And yet, I have to admit that it held…
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: The first half of the final chapter in The Hunger Games series finds the rebels preparing for an all-out war with the government. The Lowdown: More intelligent, more interesting and generally better made than its predecessors, but it's a film that would be hard to even follow for a newcomer.
Starring: Jackie Gleason, Katherine Kath, Diane Gardner, Jacques Marin, Gabrielle Dorziat

Gigot

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: On the surface, the idea of a movie in which Jackie Gleason plays mute has its appeal. At least he can't bellow every line of dialogue, because ... well, he hasn't any. In practice, however, what we get in Gigot (1962) is a gooey vanity project for Gleason, who seems to think he's…