May 2008
48 posts
Gene Triplett Review: Sex and the City: The Movie
Park Avenue becomes a fashion runway once again as the “Sex and the City” gal pals put their Manolos in motion in the colorful, playfully naughty and sometimes too cute big-screen sequel to HBO’s hit romantic comedy series. Click to read the rest of the review …
Brandy McDonnell Review: The Fall
The magic of storytelling forms the bond between a depressed man and a precocious child in the disturbing and bizarrely beautiful adult fairy tale “The Fall.” Click to read the rest of the review …
Kim Brown Review: My Blueberry Nights
With a title as delicious as “My Blueberry Nights,” it’s hard to resist this indulgent yet visually satisfying character study from Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai. Click to read the rest of the review …
Kim Brown Review: Sex and the City: The Movie
Who needs superheroes this summer when “Sex and the City” fans have Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha? Adorned in the most haute of couture, the shiniest of jewels and the highest of heels, the Fabulous Four prove in the film version that age only makes you better. Click to read the rest of the review …
James Cooper Review: Sex and the City: The Movie
In a scene early in “Sex and the City,” Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), displaying the requisite twenty-first century post-feminist angst and self-doubt, sits at a restaurant and details a recent sexual adventure with her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg). For Miranda, engaging in sexual intercourse has become a bit of a cumbersome task, a chore more than a vice that she indulges in every six...
Rod Lott's DVD-a-Go-Go
As much as I’d like to see everything in a theater, projected onto a huge screen, sometimes it just isn’t possible — blame apathy, ice storms, real life. Here’s a look at four flicks I missed at the multiplex, but caught via the relative comfort (no cell-phone jabberjaws!) of DVD. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story I’m surprised this Judd Apatow-produced comedy tanked, but then again, Christmas...
Michael Smith Review: Indiana Jones and the...
We all love Indiana Jones, and after 19 years it’s good to see our hero return, like an old friend we’ve missed terribly. But we want the best for our friends, and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is not the truly outstanding film that fans have been primed for. This is just a confirmation of Harrison Ford’s greatness in the title role — even when the story doesn’t meet his...
Kim Voynar Review: Wendy and Lucy
Director Kelly Reichardt’s much-anticipated follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2006 fest circuit hit, Old Joy, continues to show Reichardt’s remarkable gift for classically simple, deeply engaging storytelling. Wendy and Lucy is the story of Wendy (Michelle Williams), a down-on-her-luck girl who’s hoping to turn things around for herself with a summer job at a fishing cannery...
Kim Voynar Review: Adoration
Adoration, the newest film by critically acclaimed filmmaker Atom Egoyan, is a beautifully evocative film, though some may find its convoluted storyline distracting. In many respects, the film very much evokes one of my favorite films, The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan’s 1997 Palme d’Or and Oscar nominee*. Where The Sweet Hereafter dealt with the impact of guilt and grief in a small...
Sydney Pollack, 1934-2008
By George Lang Assistant Entertainment Editor, The Oklahoman When I was a teenager, I remember being extraordinarily impressed with Sydney Pollack in “Tootsie,” mainly because I knew his directorial work so well. But here was a guy whose name I had seen at the end of opening credits for “The Way We Were,” “Absence of Malice” and “Three Days of the...
Brandy McDonnell DVD Review: Wristcutters: A Love...
For a movie about suicidal people condemned to a drab afterlife, “Wristcutters: A Love Story” comes across as surprisingly funny and uplifting. Click to read the rest of the review …
Brandy McDonnell Review: Young@Heart
On the surface, the conceit behind the documentary “Young@Heart” sounds charming, with a distinct danger of detours into shameless heartstring-tugging, cutesy condescension and wearisome one-note old people jokes. The film focuses on the Young@Heart Chorus, about two dozen singing senior citizens in Northampton, Mass., who have gained worldwide fame for covering rock songs by the likes of...
Michael Smith Review: Young@Heart
Their bones ache and their joints are swollen, but they can still shake their groove things. The members of the Young@Heart chorus, average age of 80, are living proof that while their singers might only have a limited time remaining on this Earth, rock ‘n’ roll will never die, and they’re going to live it up. Click to read the rest of the review …
Michael Smith Review: Indiana Jones and the...
We all love Indiana Jones, and after 19 years it’s good to see our hero return, like an old friend we’ve missed terribly. But we want the best for our friends, and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is not the truly outstanding film that fans have been primed for. This is just a confirmation of Harrison Ford’s greatness in the title role — even when the story doesn’t meet his...
George Lang Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom...
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is Steven Spielberg and George Lucas dumping their bags of tricks into a pile and setting off an explosion of nostalgia and white-knuckle action. It’s not as whip-smart as its predecessors, but it still swings. Click to read the rest of the review …
Gene Triplett DVD Review: Dirty Harry Ultimate...
A fully loaded box set of Dirty Harry movies should make the day of any fan of Clint Eastwood’s iconoclastic cop character. The “Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector’s Edition” contains all five films: “Dirty Harry” (1971), “Magnum Force” (1973), “The Enforcer” (1976), “Sudden Impact” (1983) and “The Dead Pool” (1988). Click to read the rest of the review...
Cory Cheney Column: Urban Tulsa, 5-21-08
Next week is early deadline week, so it’ll be the annual Summer Movie Preview guide. This means you won’t get a review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which saddens me. More than any movie in the past 10 years, it’s the one I’ve most looked forward to seeing. Even more than the first Star Wars prequel. Then again, with anticipation comes extreme...
James Cooper Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom...
Thirteen years after “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” fans and critics alike have wondered what a possible fourth entry into the swashbuckling franchise might look like. Would Spielberg and Lucas provide audiences with a cynical retread, cashing in on the commercially and critically successful Indiana Jones brand? Was it possible that the hiring Mr. LaBeouf signaled the passage of...
Phil Bacharach Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
(Oklahoma Gazette, April 23, 2008) There’s nothing like a breakup for sheer misery, especially when that split is of the brutal, you’ve-just-been-unceremoniously-dumped variety. A million songs, books and movies have memorialized the singular torment of heartbreak — the tears, the depression, the boozy drowning of sorrows, the doomed rebound, the protective orders. Like the song says, breaking up...
Phil Bacharach Review: Shine a Light
(Oklahoma Gazette, April 9, 2008) Martin Scorsese knows about putting rock ’n’ roll on celluloid. As an assistant director on 1970’s “Woodstock,” he had a pivotal role in the standard-bearer of concert films. In 1978’s “The Last Waltz,” Scorsese captured the bittersweet magic of The Band’s final show. More recently, he has cranked out solid documentaries on Bob Dylan and the blues. It was...
Phil Bacharach Review: Smart People
(Oklahoma Gazette, April 16, 2008) Judging by the movies, you would think that college professors everywhere are in desperate need of a hug. Films such as “The Wonder Boys,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “The Savages” have effectively painted male academic types as unkempt misanthropes whose genius is surpassed only by their self-regard for that genius. That parade of curmudgeons continues with...
Kim Voynar Review: Hunger
Hunger, by British artist and director Steve McQueen and Irish writer Enda Walsh, is a graphically violent, deeply brooding film about IRA volunteer Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), who led a hunger strike in 1981 aimed at improving conditions for IRA prisoners and regaining their status as political prisoners. Click to read the rest of the review …
Michael Smith Review: The Visitor
Walter Vale, a college professor of economics in Connecticut, travels to New York to present a paper at a conference. When he arrives at the apartment he’s kept for many years, he finds a pair of illegal immigrants living there. This is the best thing that could have happened to Walter, a walking definition of rote activity at the start of “The Visitor,” a non-participant in...
Michael Smith Review: The Chronicles of Narnia:...
Family-friendly fare from Disney gets the rousing treatment again in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” a sequel to the 2005 holiday mega-hit that will deeply satisfy the young fans of the original work based on C.S. Lewis’ series of books. Click to read the rest of the review …
James Vance Column: "Straight Shooters"
Two ranches stood off the road to Newhall, California – one, an austere little spread that barely covered three acres; the other, a sprawling hilltop estate called Horseshoe Ranch, the home of the great film legend William S. Hart. By contrast, the tiny place in the valley below had neither a fancy name nor a picturesque view … yet the man who lived there, literally in Hart’s shadow, would...
Phil Bacharach DVD Review: The Great Debaters
Among the many intellectual exercises connected to debate is the ability to defend stances that are seemingly indefensible. I know; I used to debate in high school and remember many a round positing the evils of seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Judging by The Great Debaters, however, you wouldn’t think that debate requires much cognitive elasticity. The film, which is based on an inspiring...
James Cooper Review: Iron Man
Critics and scholars have long argued that a society gets the horror movie it deserves, reflecting the zeitgeist, and, arguably, the same is true for the superhero genre. In 2006, director Brian Singer reinvigorated the Superman franchise and gave audiences “Superman Returns,” a film where Lois Lane won a Pulitzer for her article, “Why the World Doesn’t Need...
Cory Cheney Column: Urban Tulsa, 5-14-08
I had no idea prior to walking into the theatre that Redbelt was a David Mamet film. Yes, the guy who writes dialogue that sounds like they’re speaking another language. The end result sounds something like cinematic poetry. Click to read the rest of the column …
Gene Triplett Review: The Chronicles of Narnia:...
The four Pevensie children are sucked back into the mystic once again in Disney’s “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” this time by way of a tube station near London’s Trafalgar Square instead of a wardrobe in this intermittently entertaining but overlong fantasy epic that seems far too violent for its PG rating. Click to read the rest of the review …
James Vance Review: My Brother Is an Only Child
You wouldn’t know it from its Lifetime movie-like title, but “My Brother Is an Only Child” is a smart and occasionally tough-minded little film that’s as much about the allure of radical politics as it is about the difficulties of familial relations. Click to read the rest of the review …
Michael Smith Review: The Visitor
Walter Vale, a college professor of economics in Connecticut, travels to New York to present a paper at a conference. When he arrives at the apartment he’s kept for many years, he finds a pair of illegal immigrants living there. This is the best thing that could have happened to Walter, a walking definition of rote activity at the start of “The Visitor,” a non-participant in...
George Lang Review: The Visitor
Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor” is a great humanistic tale about literally recapturing the rhythms of life. McCarthy’s fresh approach to storytelling and Richard Jenkins’ award-caliber performance transform what might otherwise be a small story into something far greater and more resonant. Click to read the rest of the review …
Kim Voynar Review: Waltz with Bashir
The horrors of war and the atrocities of which humans are capable of have, of course, been documented extensively in film since the birth of the medium. From the recent slew of documentaries on the Iraq war to Atom Egoyan’s controversial 2002 Cannes debut Ararat (about the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman empire); from Schindler’s List to The Killing Fields; from The Battle of...
Phil Bacharach DVD Review: Nanking
In late 1937, one of the most harrowing atrocities of the 20th century took place in China’s then-capital of Nanking. Japanese imperial forces invaded the walled city after a series of punishing air raids, only to then engage in a systematic reign of rape, torture and murder. Nanking, a documentary chronicling that horror, is a truly gut-wrenching experience — but it is as essential as...
Michael Smith Review: Speed Racer
If “Iron Man” opened the summer movie season as fun brain food, then “Speed Racer” is the eye candy follow-up, a hi-octane visual wonder of almost unparalleled primary color delight. Click to read the rest of the review …
Michael Smith Review: Redbelt
“Redbelt” is compelling and entertaining at the same time, all a person could ask for from playwright David Mamet’s cinematic foray into mixedmartial arts. But of course, being Mamet, this film is about so much more. Click to read the rest of the review …
Brandy McDonnell Review: Speed Racer
Writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski don’t stray far from the source for their film version of “Speed Racer,” a bizarrely entertaining “live-action anime” feature. Click to read the rest of the review …
James Vance Review: Paranoid Park
“Paranoid Park” is a lovingly crafted portrait of disaffected teens that could have been a riveting experience if only it had been entrusted to a lesser director. Click to read the rest of the review …
George Lang Review: What Happens in Vegas
Someone needs to burn this flowchart: Two mismatched and obnoxious people meet cute/drunk, are forced by a cranky judge to cohabitate, and then miraculous things happen in which they reveal unforeseen personality depths and fall in love. “What Happens in Vegas” is what happens when deeply cynical people get too familiar with that flowchart and make dull romantic comedies. Click to read the...
Cory Cheney Column: Urban Tulsa, 5-7-08
Saw just one film last weekend. I’d planned on seeing two, but after sitting through Iron Man the first time, there really wasn’t any point. I wanted to see it again, not something else. Click to read the rest of the column …
Doug Bentin on Joe Dante
Last month, director Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling) programmed a 7-part film festival, called “Dante’s Inferno,” for the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood. Twelve movies, mostly from the B to B- range, made the cut and the whole thing wrapped up with the screening of a 259-minute fruitcake called “The Movie Orgy.” It had originally run 7 hours. Here’s how Dante defined it on Tim Lucas’ “Video...
George Lang DVD Review: Honeydripper
John Sayles might be independent film’s best chronicler of regional personality, and when Sayles is at his best (1996’s “Lone Star” was his greatest achievement), every character seems to live and breathe. “Honeydripper” is Sayles’ paean to mid-20th century Alabama and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, and while the story amiably meanders in classic Sayles style, the spark of musical invention keeps it...
James Vance Review: Iron Man
With “Iron Man,” the season of big-ticket popcorn movies is not only officially launched, it’s off to a blazing start. The film debut of Marvel Comics’ long-running superhero has just about everything you want in a summer action flick — first-class special effects, a straightforward storyline and a few decent laughs. Click to read the rest of the review …
Brandy McDonnell Review: Made of Honor
Despite blissful chemistry between its leads, the romantic comedy “Made of Honor” tosses out a limp bouquet of tired gags and predictable plotlines. Click to read the rest of the review …
George Lang Review: Snow Angels
David Gordon Green’s “Snow Angels” will break your heart. The layers of desolation in an upper-Midwest college town grow deeper and deeper in this adaptation of Stewart O’Nan’s novel, and its sadness continues to resonate long after the film ends. Click to read the rest of the review …
Matthew Price Review: Iron Man
Marvel Studios introduces its latest superhero to movie screens with “Iron Man,” and the film, directed by Jon Favreau (“Elf”) brings a more mature sensibility to the genre. Co-produced with Paramount, “Iron Man” marks a launching point for what should become a successful franchise. Click to read the rest of the review …
Michael Smith Review: The Singing Revolution
Their fight was for freedom. Their strength came in numbers. Their weapons were their voices. The intriguing documentary “The Singing Revolution” tells the story of how between 1986 and 1991, Estonians seeking freedom from Soviet occupation gathered by the thousands to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence. Click to read the rest of the review …
Kim Brown Review: Made of Honor
Good chemistry is desperately hard to come by in romantic comedies. It’s a make-or-break situation from the first five minutes. And early on, the stars of “Made of Honor,” Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan, hit a good rhythm and start to charm the audience in their own amusing way. So it’s hard to blame them for the rest of this movie’s flaws, and there are many. Click to read the rest of the...