Author:   Ken Hanke

Showing 1471-1491 of 5225 results
Starring: Ed Kemmer, June Kenny, Eugene Pearson / Sally Fraser, Roger Pace, Dean Parkin

Earth vs. the Spider / War of the Colossal Beast

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The Thursday Horror Picture Show kicks off its fourth year with two fat slabs of 1950s cheese from the man who could give Kraft a run for their money: Mr. Bert I. Gordon. It's a double bill of the giant bug movie Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and the giant man movie War…
Starring: Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, David Gulpill, John Meillon, Robert McDarra

Walkabout

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Cinematographer-turned-filmmaker Nicolas Roeg's first solo film, Walkabout — the story of a pair of orphaned children lost in the Australian outback with only a young Aborigine on "walkabout" to aid them — holds up remarkably well more than 40 years later. It's a strange, quasi-mystical film that tantalizes the viewer with suggestion more…
Starring: Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci

The Company You Keep

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: An aging member of a radical group finds his life turned upside down when his true identity comes to light. The Lowdown: Robert Redford directed and stars in this complex political suspense drama that boasts a smart script and something approaching a dream cast.
Starring: Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Patrick McGoohan, Max Von Sydow

Brass Target

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The cast and the premise of John Hough's Brass Target (1978) is considerably more interesting than the film itself. The idea that General Patton was deliberately killed in that 1945 "accident" to prevent him from uncovering what happened to a hijacked trainload of Nazi gold is intriguing enough. And the prospect of Robert…
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Paulson, Ray McKinnon, Sam Shepard

Mud

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Two boys in a small Southern river town help a fugitive fix up a boat for his getaway with the woman he came back for. The Lowdown: An altogether exceptional film about Southern life as seen through the eyes of two boys on what seems to them a romantic adventure. Highly recommended.
Starring: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Marjorie White, Phyllis Barry, Louis Calhern, Hugh Herbert

Diplomaniacs

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: The now little-known comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey star in this wild — and very politically incorrect (yes, that means blackface, among other things) — satire that finds the boys as barbers on an American Indian reservation, who are sent by the tribe as their representatives at a peace conference…
Starring: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Oblivion

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A caretaker on the remnants of a post-apocalyptic Earth learns things may not be as he's been told. The Lowdown: Solidly-produced, incredibly derivative sci-fi that gets by on competence, but not much more.
Starring: Harry Belafonte, Glen Campbell, Connie Francis, The Klezmatics

Hava Nagila: The Movie

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: This year the Fine Arts Theatre's presentation of the Asheville Jewish Film Festival changes formats. Instead of a concentrated dose of films, they're running one film a week — every Thursday evening with a matinee on Friday — over the course of four weeks. The opener is this enjoyable and rather playful documentary.…

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler April 24-30: The Big Pain and Mud Company

Posted on by Ken Hanke

It’s a two and two week again—two art titles vs. two mainstream titles—though you may notice that the distributors are doing their darndest to convince people that one of those art titles, Mud, has crossover potential. In fact, it probably does—depending on whether or not they over-saturate the market by putting it on too many screens. We shall see.

Starring: Rin Takanashi, Tadashi Okuno, Ryo Kase, Denden, Mihoko Suzuki

Like Someone in Love

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A call girl is sent to spend the evening with an elderly professor and a strange kinship begins. The Lowdown: A slight, slow-moving, fragile little movie that will either haunt you with its vagueness, or frustrate you beyond endurance. I do think it's worth a look, but it's definitely for specialized tastes.
Starring: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Carmen Miranda, J. Carrol Naish, S.Z. Sakall, Curt Bois

That Night in Rio

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Brightly Technicolored musical comedy with a workable — and charmingly — plot involving mistaken identities, That Night in Rio scores its biggest points in the teaming of Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche as constantly bickering nightclub entertainers in Rio. Alice Faye (who always seems too smart for these pictures) and a second Don…
Starring: Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura, Fuyuki Murakami

Gojira (Godzilla)

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Well, the big boy is back -- proving that you can't keep the mightiest of all monsters down. It's only been about three months since our pal Gojira -- or Godzilla as he came to be known over here -- was in town to stomp and blast his way through Tokyo. World Cinema,…
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson

Re-Animator

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Believe it or not, this is the third anniversary of the Thursday Horror Picture Show — three solid years in pursuit of making Asheville warped. (Weird is so old hat by now.) That's a lot of blood under the bridge. And speaking of blood, the evening is being marked with a screening of…
Starring: Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten

Soylent Green

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Soylent Green is one of those movies that has drifted into the lexicon of popular culture based entirely on one line — the last in the film — that can't be repeated in any fair critique because that famous line gives away the whole point of the movie. On its own merits —…

Cranky Hanke’s Weekly Reeler April 17-23: Like Ginger & Oblivion

Posted on by Ken Hanke

The excitement of last week—the opening of Trance and Beyond the Pines—gives way to slighter art house pleasures this week, but pleasures all the same. There are two of those, but only one mainstream title—and no matter how it fares it absolutely has to be better than Scary Movie 5. An evening with a door-to-door God salesman or someone making an Amway pitch is better than Scary Movie 5.

Starring: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson, Danny Sapani, Matt Cross, Wahab Sheikh

Trance

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: Fast-paced combination heist movie and psychological thriller about the theft of a painting, and its incredibly convoluted aftermath where what you think you know is almost always wrong. The Lowdown: Cheekily amoral, unbelievably complex, dark, humored thriller from Danny Boyle that's reminiscent of his earlier work. Deep? Probably not, but as an act…
Starring: Abel Salazar, Ariadna Welter, Germán Robles, David Silva, Luis Aragón

The Brainiac (El Barón del Terror)

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Often billed as "the most bizarre movie ever," there's no doubt that The Brainiac stands pretty tall in the realm of the special insanity that defines the Mexican horror films of the 1950s and '60s. Whether it's the most bizarre is open to question. After all, it has no luchadores (which is a…
Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore

Evil Dead

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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The Story: A group of 20-somethings find an aged book of occultism in the incredibly spacious basement of a cabin. One of them foolishly reads from it. Nastiness ensues. The Lowdown: Slick, gory, reasonably efficient remake of the 1981 Sam Raimi cult favorite. It's OK, but apart from a pretty terrific ending, it's nothing you…
Starring: Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora, Marino Mase, Liliana Gerace, Jeannie McNeil, Pier Luigi Troglio

Fists in the Pocket

Reviewed by Ken Hanke on
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In Brief: Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket — an intimate look at the inner workings of a dysfunctional, decadent middle-class family — is something of an oddity. It's definitely not Italian neo-realism. It kind of feels like an offshoot of the French New Wave, but it's that by way of something in the nature…