Author:   Ken Hanke

Showing 967-987 of 5225 results
Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Richard Pasco, Michael Goodliffe

The Gorgon

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Back in their day, the Hammer horror films were considered to be quite graphic and bloody. Today, they seem positively restrained, but don’t sell the studio at its best short — and Terence Fisher’s The Gorgon (1964) is definitely Hammer at its best. Premise-wise you mightn’t think so, but somehow transporting a monster from…
Starring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh, Samm-Art Williams

Blood Simple

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: As good as it is on its own merits, Blood Simple worked as the Coens Brothers' announcement of themselves to the moviegoing world — showing off, to the best of their ability on a low budget, exactly what they had to offer the movies. So much of what they indeed proved they did…
Starring: Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ko Ah-sung

Snowpiercer

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: The last remnants of humanity, broken into class structures, are all aboard a super train that endlessly circles the otherwise frozen world — until revolt breaks out. The Lowdown: Brilliant, creative, exciting, suspenseful — and with much more on its mind than the usual blockbuster, Snowpiercer is a front-runner for one of the…
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Claire Trevor, Henry B. Walthall, Alan Dinehart

Dante’s Inferno

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Harry Lachman's Dante's Inferno (1935) may be more of a curio than anything else, but what a curio it is. It was an expensive production with most of the money being spent on an elaborate vision of the title Inferno (based on Gustave Dore's engravings) — and the film would be worth seeing…
Starring: Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Chris Coy, Dorian Missick, Sean Harris, Joel McHale

Deliver Us from Evil

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Fact-based hooey about a police sergeant who becomes involved in a case of demonic possession in the Bronx. The Lowdown: A somewhat atmospheric but way too long horror picture that has nothing new to offer.
Starring: Natasha Richardson, Julian Sands, Gabriel Byrne, Myriam Cyr, Timothy Spall

Gothic

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Horror meets the biographical film in Ken Russell's Gothic (1986) — a stylish and very wild and woolly take on Lord Byron's (Gabriel Byrne) house party at the villa in Switzerland with Mary Shelley (Natasha Richardson), Percy Shelley (Julian Sands) and Dr. Polidori (Timothy Spall). This, of course, was the famous party that…
Starring: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, John McGuire, Berton Churchill, Stepin Fetchit

Steamboat Round the Bend

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Will Rogers' last movie, and his third in collaboration with director John Ford, is one of the comedian's most popular and one of his best. Rogers plays a patent medicine salesman with dreams of being a steamboat captain — dreams that are put on hold when his nephew (and future riverboat pilot) comes up…
Starring: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin, Lee Meredith, Carol Arthur, Rosetta Le Noire

The Sunshine Boys

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Mystifyingly popular film version of an equally mystifyingly popular Neil Simon play about an attempt to reunite two aging vaudevillians for a TV special. Almost as mystifying is the reason for doing this, since the one-time partners cordially detest each other, but without the attempt, there's no story. The sole point of calm…
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, H.R. Geiger, Chris Foss, Brontis Jodorowsky

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Documentary about cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's incredibly ambitious, never-made film of Frank Herbert's Dune. The Lowdown: One of the most entertaining documentaries in living memory — especially for movie fans. It paints a compelling and enjoyable portrait of what may have been a milestone of 1970s filmmaking had it actually been made. That…
Starring: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman, David Cross, Richard Kind, Polly Draper

Obvious Child

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: After a drunken one-night stand, a comic finds herself pregnant, faced with a suitor she doesn't want and an impending abortion. The Lowdown: Yes, it's been critically lauded, but personally, I found this abortion-themed rom-com mostly tedious, unfunny and cursed with an unlikable main character.
Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Norm Rossington, John Junkin, Victor Spinetti

A Hard Day’s Night

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: The Beatles perform a televised concert, have various adventures and nearly lose Ringo in the process. The Lowdown: Here we have one of the greatest — and arguably most important — films of the 1960s getting a two-day (Saturday and Sunday) re-issue in honor of its 50th anniversary. Oh, it's not like A…
Starring: Michael Caine, Karl Malden, Françoise Dorléac, Ed Begley, Oscar Homolka, Guy Doleman, Vladek Sheybal

Billion Dollar Brain

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The Asheville Film Society's annual birthday salute to British filmmaker Ken Russell (1927-2011) reaches back to Russell's first shot at international fame, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the third film in Michael Caine's Harry Palmer (the "thinking man's James Bond") series. Caine had been impressed by Russell's TV work and had him hired for…
Starring: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Jerzy Trela, Adam Szyszkowski

Ida

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Before taking her final vows as a nun, a novice is sent out into the world to meet her only relative and learn about her past. The Lowdown: Strong, beautifully shot character drama that seems to be being taken for more than it is because of topics it touches on. Definitely good, but…
Starring: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin. Liv LeMoyne, Johan Liljemark, Mattias Wiberg

We Are the Best!

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A pair of outsiders — 13-year-old girls — decide to start a punk rock group in 1982 Sweden. That they have no clue how to play music is only part of the problem. The Lowdown: A slight but charming and winning little movie that beautifully taps into the essence of early adolescence without…
Starring: Michel Simon, Marcelle Hainia, Sévérine Lerczinska, Charles Granval

Boudu Saved from Drowning

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Jean Renoir's 1931 satirical comedy Boudu Saved from Drowning is perhaps the great filmmaker's first true masterpiece. Its story of what happens when a well-meaning bookseller rescues an indolent and ungrateful tramp, Boudu (played by the great Michel Simon), from drowning himself in the Seine is a simple one. But it leaves plenty…
Starring: John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda, Christopher Walken, Mike Doyle

Jersey Boys

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Standard showbiz biopic on Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The Lowdown: If you're wild about the music of Frankie Valli, this probably passes muster, but it's also a sloppy, cliché-ridden mess of a movie that never breaks free of its biopic-basic approach.
Starring: Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi, Mickey Knox, Clive Riche

Cemetery Man

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: So far as I'm concerned, Dario Argento disciple Michel Soavi made the absolute best Italian horror film of all time with 1994's Cemetery Man. This story of a cemetery — presided over by Rupert Everett (who tends to leave the film off his résumé) — where the dead (at least some of them)…
Starring: Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, James Wilby, Jeremy Northam, Bob Balaban

Gosford Park

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: It seems that Robert Altman and Bob Balaban got together and decided that Altman's multicharacter ensemble approach with its overlapping dialogue was just right for one of those house-party-murder mysteries — and they were right. Actually, they were more than right, since the resulting film, Gosford Park, was more than a classic mystery.…
Starring: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Allen Vincent, Arthur Edmund Carewe

Mystery of the Wax Museum

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Michael Curtiz returned the horror genre with Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), which was only natural since the previous year's Doctor X  had been the film that had put the horror genre on the map at Warner Bros. Again, Curtiz was working in two-strip Technicolor, with the same stars -- Lionel Atwill…