Monday 20 May
 
 

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Texas Chainsaw

One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Captain America: Collector’s Edition

Not long after Batman changed Hollywood in the summer of 1989, every studio wanted to have the next comics-based blockbuster. I remember visiting Penn Square Mall’s multiplex (as I did often back then) and seeing a poster for Captain America. The one-sheet was comprised of little more than a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield and a promise to arrive next summer.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Dark Circles

With the Broken Lizard comedy troupe becoming increasingly broken, member Paul Soter has branched off to write and direct something about as far away as one can get from the likes of Super Troopers and Beerfest: a horror film. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking maybe he should stay on his own.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Die! Die! My Darling!

File 1965's Die! Die! My Darling! under that now-dead subgenre dubbed "Grande Dame Guignol." The Hammer Films production may lack the dueling duo of two twilight-era titans of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the others, but truth be told, Tallulah Bankhead is fierce enough to provide all the fire it needs.
05/14/2013 | Comments 0
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Features

Brevity, thy name is Sundance


See seven stories for the price of one in this year’s crop of shorts from the Sundance Film Festival.

Rod Lott December 14th, 2011  

2011 Sundance Film Festival Shorts
7:30 p.m. Thursday, 5:30 and 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
415 Couch
okcmoa.com
236-3100
$5-$8

In its continued celebration of stories, per Robert Redford’s introductory narration, the Sundance Institute has packaged seven acclaimed short films from its 2011 festival into one feature-length presentation. The results screen Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and as with many such loosely themed compilations, the results comprise a mixed bag.

From England, “The Eagleman Stag” (pictured) is the only animated segment, not to mention the lone colorless entry. Although it begins promisingly with a fetus remarking, “Yes, this seems about right,” its story of a miserable life compressed into nine minutes is nothing special, even if the stop-motion papercut animation is. Sorrow continues in “The Strange Ones,” a tale about a man, the child traveling with him, and the stranger to whom the boy spills chilling secrets.

The first winner is Sweden’s “Incident by a Bank,” a re-creation of a real robbery, but shot from the street outside, leaving your mind to piece events together based largely on auditory cues. Sound familiar? It should if you attended OKCMOA’s Manhattan Short Film Festival in September, of which “Incident” was a part, but it’s worth seeing again.

Bound to be the audience favorite is “Worst Enemy,” starring “Saturday Night Live” veteran Michaela Watkins as an insecure, single artist who inexplicably believes she’s in need of a full-body girdle, in which she gets stuck. It’s written and directed winningly by Lake Bell, an actress (TV’s “Childrens Hospital”) who’s usually quite funny herself.

The only documentary is the five-minute “The High Level Bridge.”

Shown in competition locally at last summer’s deadCENTER Film Festival, it concerns a bridge in Canada notorious for a high rate of suicidal jumpers. Its highlight arrives at the end, when director Trevor Anderson flings his camera over the edge.

“We’re Leaving” chronicles what happens when an American redneck couple lose their rental and try to find new housing. It seems landlords don’t cotton to their decade-old pet alligator. Its dark-humored streak works to court audience favor.

The program should end there, but the longest has been saved for last. Unfortunately, it’s the weakest, too: “Deeper Than Yesterday,” a 20-minute Australian work about a Russian submarine crew who have been underwater for three months, and it shows. What they find floating late in the film should make you feel terribly queasy, especially since the not-quite-sane men deem it “a miracle.”

All told, the good minutes of the program outweigh the bad, enough for a slight recommendation.

 
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