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Articles

• That's Entertainment (G)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 5 days ago

  Genre: Compilation Documentary

  Director: Jack Haley, Jr.

  Starring: Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Debbie Reynolds

  In Brief: Riding in on the last of the late 1960s/early 1970s nostalgia wave, That's Entertainment positioned itself as a documentary about the Hollywood musical. In truth, it was a two-hour commercial for MGM that presented one seriously skewed version of film history. That's not to say the film doesn't include some pretty impressive (and more than a few clunker) musical numbers — all culled from the MGM library — but it presents a very small fragment of the movie musical genre as if it was the whole story.

  4 comments

  102 views

• The Ladykillers (R)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 5 days ago

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

  Starring: Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall, J.K. Simmons, Marlon Wayans, Tzi Ma

  b>In Brief: The Coen Brothers' much misunderstood reimagining of the 1955 Ealing Studios Comedy of the same name finds Tom Hanks taking on the role originated by Alec Guinness — and making it his own. That's much the same thing the Coens did with the film — adhering to the basics of the story about a group of not-very-adept criminals using the home of an unsuspecting little old lady as their base of operations, while creating something completely fresh and original. It deserves another chance.

  6 comments

  135 views

• Godzilla Raids Again (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 5 days ago

  Genre: Sci Fi

  Director: Motoyoshi Oda

  Starring: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura

  In Brief: It's the first Godzilla sequel and, despite the fact that it was rushed to cash in on the original film so that it was in theaters within four months of Godzilla, it's still a reasonably good entry. It's also the last of the series that can be taken seriously — at least sort of seriously. As far as Japanese giant monster pictures are concerned, Godzilla Raids Again is something of an essential.

  0 comments

  100 views

• House of Good and Evil (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 5 days ago

  Genre: Psychological Horror

  Director: David Mun

  Starring: Rachel Marie Lewis, Christian Oliver, Marietta March, Jordan Rhodes

  In Brief: This year's feature film winner of the Twin Rivers Media Festival marks the first time a horror movie has taken the prize. But David Mun's House of Good and Evil isn't your typical horror film. Rather, this is psychological horror about a couple trying to get their lives — and marriage — back on track in the wake of a tragedy by moving into an isolated old house in the country. What happens there isn't at all what they expect. Not everything in the films works — it goes on too long and it cheats a bit — but it's a well-acted, good-looking film that plays up atmosphere more than shocks.

  0 comments

  186 views

• Walk Don't Run (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 5 days ago

  Genre: Comedy

  Director: Charles Walters (High Society)

  Starring: Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar, Jim Hutton, John Standing, Miiko Taka

  In Brief: Pack Memorial Library concludes its Cary Grant series with — appropriately enough — Grant's last film, Walk Don't Run. It's an agreeable enough remake of George Stevens' 1943 comedy The More the Merrier — moved from crowded wartime Washington to crowded Tokyo during the 1964 summer Olympics. The problem with it — from a box office standpoint — was that audiences wanted Cary Grant as a leading man, and what they got was Grant as a middle-aged businessman playing matchmaker for Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar. It just wasn't a popular idea, though it plays better now as a lesser tier Grant picture.

  0 comments

  87 views

• Defiant Requiem (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 12 days ago

  Genre: Documentary

  Director: Doug Schultz

  Starring: Bebe Neuwirth (voice)

  In Brief: Since the closing film of the Asheville Film Festival was not available for review, these comments are merely drawn from the film's press notes: "Defiant Requiem tells the little-known story of the Nazi concentration camp, Terezin. Led by imprisoned conductor Rafael Schächter, the inmates of Terezin fought back...with art and music. Through hunger, disease and slave labor, the Jewish inmates of Terezin hold on to their humanity by staging plays, composing opera and using paper and ink to record the horrors around them. This creative rebellion reaches its peak when Schächter teaches a choir of 150 inmates one of the world's most difficult and powerful choral works, Verdi's 'Requiem,' re-imagined as a condemnation of the Nazis. The choir would ultimately confront the Nazis face to face."

  0 comments

  110 views

• Whoopee! (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 12 days ago

  Genre: Musical Comedy

  Director: Thornton Freeland (Flying Down to Rio)

  Starring: Eddie Cantor, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, Eleanor Hunt, George Olsen and His Music

  In Brief: Like a wonderful time capsule, Whoopee! offers us a glimpse into a world that hasn't existed for a very long time: the 1920s Broadway theater. Almost no one who was a part of that world is still with us, and even those who might have seen such a show are seriously diminished in number. Yet at the flick of a switch, Whoopee! — starring the legendary Eddie Cantor and the should-be-legendary Ethel Shutta — has the power to take us back to that world in all its antique charm. Whatever it lacks in cinematic style, it more than makes up for in its energetic, appealing cast, bright tunes and sheer good-natured nonsense.

  0 comments

  97 views

• I'm Not Rappaport (PG-13)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 12 days ago

  Genre: Drama

  Director: Herb Gardner (A Thousand Clowns)

  Starring: Walter Matthau, Ossie Davis, Amy Irving, Martha Plimpton, Craig T. Nelson

  In Brief: Playwright and sometimes filmmaker Herb Gardner brings his play I'm Not Rappaport to the screen with Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis in the leads. The first hour of its rather too expansive running time is very good indeed, if not especially great filmmaking. Matthau and Davis make an appealing pair of old men — not exactly friends, but who else is around? — whiling away their time in Central Park, each with his own problems. The dialogue — while sounding like dialogue — is good and penetrating. Then we get to what amounts to the second act and the film's desire to evolve into a more elaborate drama bogs things down pretty fast. It remains easily watchable, but it turns into less by trying to be more.

  1 comments

  100 views

• La Jetée / Mousse (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 12 days ago

  Genre: Sci-Fi / Comedy-Drama

  Director: Chris Marker / John Hellberg

  Starring: Davos Hanich, Hélène Chatelain, Jacques Ledoux / Stepháne Bertola, Gunnar Ernblad, Marienette Dahlin

  In Brief: Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) has been shown by World Cinema before, so the real story here is the screening of this year's winner for Best Short Film at Twin Rivers Media Festival, John Hellberg's Mousse. This is a charming and quirky, fairly long (40 minutes) short that details a robbery gone wrong in ways that can scarcely be imagined. It's all about what happens when a Frenchman named Mousse holds up a Swedish betting parlor on the biggest racing day of the year. He also happens upon the most conspicuously odd hostages he could hope for, an incredibly geriatric police force and a compatriot so drunk that he might be dead. Clever, amusing, well-made and more than a little surprising.

  0 comments

  87 views

• The Frozen Ghost / Mysterious Mr. Wong (NR)

  

  

  MOVIES

  Ken Hanke | 12 days ago

  Genre: Horror Mystery

  Director: Harold Young (The Mummy's Tomb) / William Nigh (Black Dragons)

  Starring: Lon Chaney, Jr., Evelyn Ankers, Milburn Stone / Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Arline Judge

  In Brief: It's finally the makeup showing of the canceled The Frozen Ghost (1945) starring Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his better Inner Sanctum mysteries. This time it's paired with the full-tilt nonsense of the delightfully silly Mysterious Mr. Wong starring Bela Lugosi in the title role, Mr. Wong — a criminal mastermind matching wits against wisecracking reporter Wallace Ford (professional wisecracking reporter portrayer). It rarely makes good sense and even feels like a serial stuffed into a 60-minute movie, but it provides no end of bizarre entertainment with the most anticlimactic ending ever.

  3 comments

  215 views
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