Monday 20 May
OKG Newsletter
Phil Bacharach
Novel ideas
Eight Oklahoma authors offer suggestions for curling up with a good book when it’s cold.
A 'transformational' gift
The OKC National Memorial & Museum receives the largest private donation in its nearly 12-year history.
News
Phil Bacharach
The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum has received a $3.5 million gift from the Inasmuch Foundation, the largest private donation since the museum's opening in 2001.
Searching for Sugar Man
A true story that's truly sweet.
Documentary
Phil Bacharach
This is a golden age of documentaries, and I don’t mean the propagandistic variety via Michael Moore or 2016: Obama’s America. Given the pervasive timidity and lack of imagination in Hollywood today, film buffs are well advised to take stock of documentaries, where the most gripping stories are being told.
Zero Dark Thirty
Controversy doesn’t lessen the impact of one of 2012’s best films.
Thriller
Phil Bacharach
Don’t trust the audience members.
Trusting them appears to be the cardinal sin of Zero Dark Thirty, a masterful, absorbing film dramatizing the CIA's 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden. It has been at the center of controversy for its depiction of U.S. intelligence agents using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” otherwise known as torture.
Looper
Dystopian society, time travel, telekinesis, gangland killings — welcome to one of the best movies of last year.
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
An icon of fashion gets the spotlight in a new documentary.
Documentary
Phil Bacharach
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
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
This Is 40
Middle age seems muddle-aged in Judd Apatow's familial comedy.
Comedy
Phil Bacharach
Judd Apatow has given us some hilariously raunchy comedies, but This Is 40 finds the writer-director in his grown-up mode, at least in intent, extracting the funny from the advent of middle age. But his understanding of life in the 40s isn’t necessarily the universal kind.
The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan directs a fitting send-off to his Batman trilogy.
Action
Phil Bacharach
Due to the twisted savagery of a young man in a Colorado movie theater, The Dark Knight Rises will forever be a footnote in American history. Hopefully, that horrific massacre will not influence perceptions of this epic conclusion to writer-director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
Hitchcock
It’s less suspense and more family plot in this muddled biopic of the master of suspense.
Drama
Phil Bacharach
Alfred Hitchcock was more than the master of suspense. The director of such landmark motion pictures as Rear Window and Vertigo was instrumental in devising the language of modern film. As such, it seems a cruel irony that a movie about him would be made by decidedly lesser filmmakers.
ParaNorman
The walking dead get animated in a freaky, funny family film.
Family
Phil Bacharach
If you haven’t seen 2009’s Coraline, you might be more inclined to surrender yourself to the macabre charm of ParaNorman. Both films, works of stop-motion animation by the Oregon-based Laika company, share much in common: an outcast protagonist, ineffectual grown-ups, visually stunning riffs on the supernatural.
Fred Won’t Move Out
A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
Drama
Phil Bacharach
Fred Won’t Move Out
5:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
415 Couch
okcmoa.com
236-3100
$5-$8
Lincoln
Daniel Day-Lewis embodies America's arguably greatest president.
Drama
Phil Bacharach
Lincoln practically shouts “prestige production” before you’ve even had a chance to buy your popcorn. A costume drama about one of this nation’s most revered historical figures, this is the kind of film irresistible to awards groups.
Dust to dust
The latest film by acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns chronicles a dark, dusty chapter in Oklahoma history.
Features
Phil Bacharach
Even after 80-plus years, Oklahoma remains firmly identified with, and haunted by, the Dust Bowl.
Your Sister's Sister
Three’s a crowd in one fine film.
Drama
Phil Bacharach
In an age of cinema jammed with reboots, remakes and raunch, it's a welcome revelation to come across the heartfelt Your Sister's Sister on Blu-ray and DVD, in which low-budget indie meets comedy of manners.
Wanda Jackson — Unfinished Business
Rock
Phil Bacharach
You can’t keep genuine royalty from flaunting their power. Wanda Jackson, the 1950s’ Queen of Rockabilly who set the standard for rock ’n’ roll women and even managed to get Elvis Presley hot and bothered, is back with Unfinished Business.
