This, of course, is Star Trek Into Darkness week, which, I confess, doesn’t thrill me as much as Gatsby week, but I’m not against it. We also have two art/indie titles braving the blockbuster storm—and both are really worthwhile.
Author: Ken Hanke
Showing 1450-1470 of 5225 results
Moulin Rouge!
In Brief: If you've only ever seen Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001) on a TV screen, you really haven't seen Moulin Rouge! at all. This is a movie that needs to be seen in a theater on the biggest screen possible — and that's just what the Asheville Film Society is offering with this month's…
Iron Man 3
The Story: Tony Stark (Iron Man) does battle with a terrorist super criminal — sort of. The Lowdown: It's big. It's noisy. And it's mostly a dull mess that's marginally saved by its star. Very marginally.
Disconnect
The Story: Three interconnected and intercut stories about the perils of our modern Internet and cellphone-addicted world. The Lowdown: No topic may be more timely than the dehumanizing effects of our supposedly connected society, but making it into drama is a risky proposition — one that this effective film largely overcomes through strong characters and…
Renoir
The Story: Biographical drama about the aged painter, his future filmmaker son and the young woman who inspired them both during the summer of 1915. The Lowdown: An almost impossibly beautiful-looking film — one so visually arresting that it more than makes up for the leisurely nature of its approach. Actually, the story itself is…
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
In Brief: While it may be faulted for being the film that domesticated Cary Grant — and that it owes a lot to George Washington Slept Here — there's no denying that Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is an entertaining picture with a cast that most movies would kill to have. It's the basic…
Libeled Lady
In Brief: Sophisticated comedy with Myrna Loy as the rich society girl who sues a newspaper for libel, Spencer Tracy as the beleagured managing editor, William Powell as a sharp former reporter who knows all the angles and Jean Harlow as Tracy's long-suffering fiancée. The plan is that Powell will marry Harlow, then seduce Loy…
Trafic
Not that Jacques Tati’s films were ever exactly mainstream successes in the U.S., his final theatrical feature, Trafic (1971), fared worse than most. I’m not sure why, but a couple of things do come into play. The first is that while Tati is still playing his traditional Monsieur Hulot character — the tan raincoat, the…
Svengali
In Brief: One of the most stylish and effective of all early horror talkies, Svengali is a perfect blend of atmosphere, writing and a towering performance by star John Barrymore in one of his two or three best performances. The story, taken from George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, had already been filmed a half-dozen…
Let My People Go!
In Brief: Wild — but warm and winning — comedy invades the Asheville Jewish Film Festival with Let My People Go!. It's all about Ruben, an awkward young gay Jewish Frenchman living with his boyfriend in Finland. When the two have a falling out, Ruben has no choice but to run back to his eccentric…
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler May 8-14: Gatsby Renoir Lore Disconnect
Finally — it’s the weekend we get Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, a movie bound to polarize just about everyone, and a movie fairly certain to be mauled by a lot of critics, which perhaps makes it that much more interesting. At the same time, we get three new art titles and a kind of stealth attack from Tyler Perry.
State’s Attorney
In Brief: John Barrymore (in a sometimes debatable state of sobriety) stars as a sharp lawyer, whose political ambitions put him at odds with his old pal, gangster Vanny Powers (William "Stage" Boyd). Enjoyable pre-code drama (makes no bones about Helen Twelvetrees' profession or the fact that she and Barrymore are living together without benefit…
The Big Wedding
The Story: A long-divorced couple pretend to be married in order not to upset their adopted son's conservative birth mother at his wedding. The Lowdown: An absolutely painfully awful waste of a good cast, 89 minutes of your life and however much you pay to see it.
Beyond the Hills
The Story: A troubled young woman goes home to reclaim her old friend, only to find the friend has changed since becoming a nun in a strict Orthodox convent. The Lowdown: Dark and disturbing drama about obsession — both sacred and profane — that will be for very specific tastes, owing to its slow pace…
Tout Va Bien
In Brief: Jean-Luc Godard's Tout Va Bien may be the single best representation of the filmmaker's work in that it's brilliant, stupid, fascinating, boring, compelling and infuriating at the same time. That strikes me as a perfect summation of the many faces of Godard packed into one movie. What the film is about is hard…
Dead Silence
In Brief: Incredibly creepy, surprisingly elaborate and almost a complete departure for Saw writer-director James Wan and his co-author Leigh Whannell as they trade in the pointless sadism of Saw for something more like classic horror with Dead Silence. Here they've cooked up a kind of local folklore yarn about the spirit of an evil…
The Other Son
In Brief The old gag about babies switched at birth has been dusted off and given new relevance by having them be the children of Israeli and Palestinian families. Much more entertaining and compelling than its hoary premise and oddly old-fashioned filmmaking style would suggest. It manages to be moving and feel realistic without being…
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
In Brief: One of the most peculiar movies ever — famous for its quirks and for being written by Roger Ebert — Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is everything you've heard and a little bit more. It's a camp fest (oddly, written and directed by a couple of straight boys) disguised as a cautionary…
The Blue Angel
In Brief: The Blue Angel (1930) marked not only the first German sound film, but, more importantly, the meeting of filmmaker Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. It remains the most well-known of the seven films they made together, but it's hardly the best of the lot — which doesn't keep it from being iconic.…
Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler May 1-7: Beyond Iron Man 237
It’s the beginning of summer — or so the movies insist — and first out of the gate in the headlong rush for your moviegoing bucks is Iron Man 3. And, of course, no mainstream release is about to go up against it. A couple of foolhardy art/indie titles are not so reticent.
The Shining
In Brief: Here is a rare opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of horror on the big screen — and in a brand new digital cinema print, meaning it probably looks better than it did in 1980 when it was first released. Kubrick is one of those filmmakers whose work truly cries out for big…