January 2012
5 posts
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Haywire/The Artist
3-D Isn’t The Only Gimmick
If A Cursor Falls On A Link And There’s No One There To Hear It…
Joe O'Shansky's Top 10 Films of 2011
Next year I’m doing a Top 11. Unless the Mayans were right.
Click here for the (last?) list…
Michael Smith's Best 10 films of 2011
After seeing about 200 movies in 2011, I decided that there was no definitively great movie of 2011. I can’t imagine people talking about any of these movies in 20 years as having been “all-time classics.”
If last year’s “The Social Network,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Black Swan,” “True Grit” or “Inception” had...
Phil Bacharach's Top 10 Films of 2011
Not one of the better years for movies, 2011 ultimately might wind up best remembered as the year everyone finally got a collective migraine from 3-D. Still, there were some outstanding films here and there:
Click here to see the list …
Rod Lott's Top 10 Films of 2011
With even fewer great movies in 2011 than 2010, I was unsure whether I’d be able to find enough to fill the standard 10 slots. (Oddly, Tom Cruise to the rescue!) I’m also unsure what it says about me that I know general audiences would not be able to handle four of these films, starting with the top three.
Click here to see the list ….
December 2011
1 post
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle names "The Artist"...
Oklahoma City, Dec. 23 — The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, the statewide group of professional film critics, has announced its sixth annual list of awards for achievement in cinema, giving top honors to the “The Artist,” a black-and-white, silent film that speaks volumes about movies and the people who make and watch them.
It also earned two additional wins for Michel Hazanavicius in the...
November 2011
5 posts
Jeffrey Huston's Review: The Descendants
While the quirky, satirical and even provocative sensibilities of Payne’s previous efforts emerge here, The Descendants is his most tender film to date.
Click here to read the full review…
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: These Amazing...
Apparently, even my editors think Ted Turner is an asshole. Meanwhile, Tarsem should just make the world’s awesomest looking commercials. They take less time.
Click: It’s Not Just an Adam Sandler Movie…
Jeffrey Huston Review: Tower Heist
This movie is a lot of fun and, in the era of Occupy Wall Street, ends up being a perfectly-timed wish-fulfillment caper for the 99%.
Click here to read the full review…
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Honors Sterlin Harjo...
The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle has honored filmmaker Sterlin Harjo with the 2011 Tilghman Award celebrating achievement in cinema in the state.
The OFCC presented Harjo with the Tilghman Award Friday, Nov. 5, after a screening of several of his most recent works, documentary shorts for Tulsa’s This Land Press. The event was at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Harjo, a 31-year-old member of...
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: In Time/The Rum Diary
Plagiarizer! Andrew Niccol that is.
Click here for Original Thoughts…
October 2011
1 post
Jeffrey Huston Reviews: The Ides of March
A polished but undistinguished Oscar hopeful, one where the execution of the material is first-rate but the script itself—while fine—plays like a “Greatest Hits of Political Parables.” It’s done well, but we’ve seen all this before.
Click here to read the full review…
September 2011
4 posts
Joe O'Shansky Feature: Reel Progress
Wherein Tulsa Gets An International Film Festival!
Let Your Finger Do The Clicking…
Jeffrey Huston Reviews: Moneyball
For people who’ve never been that interested in baseball, Moneyball may very well provoke a fascination with the game in a way that no traditional inspiring sports movie ever could.
Click here to read the full review…
Joe O'Shansky Review: Beats, Rhymes and...
I’m loving documentaries because they are awesome. And I didn’t see Contagion.
Click here if you are actually reading this…
Joe O'Shansky: The Ten Best and Five Worst Films...
2011 Edition!
Click here for Love and Hate…Then watch Do the Right Thing!
August 2011
3 posts
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Conan the Barbarian/Fright...
Conan the Conqueror. It could happen. Arnie’s the right age and out of work. John Milius isn’t dead yet. Keep hope alive! Meanwhile, Fright Night is awful.
Click here to find out why, unsurprisingly, these movies sucked…
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Crazy, Stupid, Love/The...
Two dissimilar romantic comedies for the price of one.
”Shay whus own-lay fef-teen yaz owld!”…
Phil Bacharach Review: Cowboys & Aliens
“Cowboys & Aliens” sounds like one of those high-concept flicks for which you might expect the idea went no further than the jokey title. Think “Snakes on a Plane.”
But in one of the pleasant surprises of the summer-movie season, this genre mash-up is lean, handsomely crafted entertainment. It works precisely because it acts as if there’s no joke. You’ve got cowboys, and you’ve got aliens....
July 2011
9 posts
Jeffrey Huston Review: Another Earth
Despite an arresting idea and admirable execution…the movie doesn’t know what to do with itself other than resort to boilerplate melodrama. Another Earth needs another screenplay.
Click here to read the full review…
Jeffrey Huston Review: The Smurfs
The only ambitions apparent in The Smurfs are commercial, not emotional or artful. As is, it’s just a glorified babysitter that will distract little tykes well enough but disappoint everyone else.
Click here to read the full review…
Phil Bacharach Review: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
Last year’s debacle over “The Tonight Show” didn’t quite reach Shakespearean proportions, but you sure couldn’t tell it at the time. When Jay Leno left the hallowed television franchise for a stab at prime time, NBC gave the coveted late-night slot to Conan O’Brien, who had been patiently waiting in the latelate-night wings.
Things did not go according to plan. Ratings tanked for both Leno and...
Phil Bacharach Review: Friends with Benefits
Here are a few tips for aspiring moviemakers: If you want to mock the clichés of romantic comedy, try not to fall prey to them yourself.
And if you want your film to withstand the test of time, don’t be tempted to include of-the-moment pop-culture crazes like, say, a flash mob.
“Friends with Benefits,” an otherwise springy rom-com, is saddled with two flash mob scenes, an unfortunate turn given...
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Beginners/Page One: Inside...
The dead and the dying, the uplifting and the disheartening, in two great films.
Click away…you can click away…read all day…if you want to…
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Conan O'Brien Can't...
Documentary and fantasy collide. Though everyone’s with Coco.
Stare intently at this link until it “clicks”…
James Vance: Think Fast Mr. Moto
In the movies, no one has ever personified The Outsider better than Peter Lorre. His baby-faced murderer (and perhaps worse) of children in M, his flamboyantly insane surgeon in Mad Love, his alternately melancholy and ruthless burn victim forced into a life of crime in The Face Behind the Mask, his sinister effeminate soldier of fortune in The Maltese Falcon … It’s hard to name another actor of...
Jeffrey Huston Review: Zookeeper
It doesn’t get any more simplistic than the “Fat Man Fall Down” brand of comedy…and since Chris Farley, no one’s done it better than Kevin James.
Click here to read the full review…
Joe O'Shansky Review: Transformers-Dark of the...
I don’t know why comparing Transformers: Dark of the Moon to a 200,000,000 million dollar “dildo-equipped Lamborghini” crossed the editorial line. But it did.
Click here…
June 2011
10 posts
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: The Tree of Life/Incendies
Two amazing filmmakers knock you on your ass.
Click here for some atypical summer adoration…
Jams Vance Review: Buck
Warm, inspirational and gently mesmerizing, Buck is as lovely a marriage of subject and presentation as you’re likely to find on any screen at the moment.
Click here to read the full review
Jeffrey Huston Review: Bad Teacher
We begin to realize that the last thing we want — i.e. for her to succeed — is exactly where this movie is headed. We’re left actively rooting against what the director is actively striving for.
Click here to read the full review…
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: The Green Lantern/Buck
Wherein I can’t believe I forgot to mention the similarities between “The Green Lantern” and “Thor”. And “Buck” is good.
Click in this general area…
Phil Bacharach Review: The Tree of Life
For a vast understatement, let’s say “The Tree of Life” is an atypical summer movie.
Click here to read the rest of the review …
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Super 8/Potiche
J.J. Abrams proves you can’t go home again while François Ozon abandons the sexy.
Click here to read the reviews…
Jeffrey Huston Review: Super 8
Super 8 isn’t just the best summer movie of 2011. It’s the best summer movie since the era that spawned summer movies.
Click here to read the full review…
Jeffrey Huston Review: Midnight In Paris
Midnight in Paris is a cute little fable that explores the misplaced romanticism of nostalgia…and while [Allen’s] latest certainly makes us more wistful for his classics, this is certainly one to enjoy and not burden unfairly by comparison.
Click here to read the full review…
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: X-Men: First Class/Midnight...
One franchise and one filmmaker rise from the ashes of their previous films.
Click here to read the full reviews….
Jeffrey Huston Review: Priest
On the whole, characters are simplistic and stock, with most—both good and bad—talking in slow, gravely, intimidating whispers with snarled frowns and piercing stares. Here’s a popcorn flick in serious need of another layer or, at least, a sense of humor
Click here to read the full review…
May 2011
5 posts
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Hobo with a Shotgun/The...
Rutger Hauer kills the shit out of people and Morgan Spurlock wonders why he’s so clever.
Click here to read the full reviews…
Phil Bacharach Review: Meek's Cutoff
Lest anyone thinks otherwise, wandering the Oregon Trail in 1845 was no walk in the park.
In “Meek’s Cutoff,” director Kelly Reichardt painstakingly reveals the hardscrabble existence of a few pioneers — lost and bereft of water — as they spiral from desperation to panic. It’s a compelling narrative with flashes of enigmatic majesty, but those moments are snuffed out by an unrelentingly glacial...
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Bridesmaids/Cave of...
Saturday Night Live sucks but Bridesmaids doesn’t. Meanwhile, a mad, German demi-God places a mirror in front of your soul.
Click here to read the reviews…
Summer Film Preview I
“X-Men: First Class — Marvel strikes more than once this summer with this attempt to re-invigorate the X-Men franchise. How do you do that? Make it an origin story, re-cast roles with names like Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank) and Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and then give it to the director of Kick-Ass. Good start.”
Read the rest here…
Phil Bacharach Review: A Film Unfinished
The camera doesn’t lie — except, of course, when it does.
Click here to read the rest of the review …
April 2011
7 posts
Phil Bacharach Review: Rio
From the conveyer belt of Fox Animation, “Rio” comes equipped with a predictable story, perfunctory characters and presentable visuals.
Click here to read the review …
Joe O'Shansky Reviews: Your Highness/Hanna
Expectations can be a movie’s worst enemy; right behind not being particularly good…
…Hanna, a wonderful amalgam of tight storytelling and often gorgeous visual style, is a compelling tale that hopefully makes its lead, Saoirse Ronan, the star that her role in Peter Jackson’s awful The Lovely Bones failed to make her.
Click here to read the full reviews…
Phil Bacharach Review: Win Win
In “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor,” writer/director Thomas McCarthy explored the dynamics of family, but not in the conventional sense.
The characters in those films created their own families. His newest work, “Win Win,” manages to take a nuclear family and still convert it into something different and deeper.
Click to read the rest of the review ….
Jeffrey Huston Review: Win Win
Win Win may be formulaic in plot, but it’s authentic in the details.
Click here to read the full review…
Jeffrey Huston Review: Source Code
Hollywood-style compromises neuter a potent idea into near-emasculation.
Click here to read the full review…
Jeffrey Huston Review: Hop
It’s not worthy of becoming an annual holiday viewing tradition but, as fun matinee diversions go, the kids should have a blast.
Click here to read the full review…
Phil Bacharach Review: Hanna
Life can be hard for a 16-year-old girl. Clueless parents, frenemies, boy trouble, pressure over grades, zits: The dramas are nearly Shakespearean. And that doesn’t even take into account the shadowy government agents out to get you.
That last problem is the chief one facing the title character of “Hanna,” a sleek thriller opening Friday, buoyed by smart performances and a director eager to...