ParaNorman

Children's
None
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.

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Ruby Sparks

In this appealing indie rom-com, a novelist’s girl of his dreams springs from the page to a real person.

Comedy
Rod Lott
In Ruby Sparks, wunderkind author Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano, There Will Be Blood) has a few problems — one being that he is dateless, another that his male dog pees like a girl. More pressing is that he lacks the inspiration to follow up the Great American Novel that landed the high-school dropout on The New York Times best-seller list when he was all of 19.

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Headhunters

Oslo can you go? To the depths of man’s darkest and deadliest desires, according to a fun foreign crime thriller.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Headhunters
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
415 Couch
okcmoa.com
236-3100
$5-$8

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Lovely Molly

Good golly, Miss 'Molly'!

Horror
Rod Lott
Another camcorder film? Only in part, but at least Lovely Molly comes from the mind of Eduardo Sánchez, who helped kick-start the craze back on a mainstream scale with 1999's The Blair Witch Project, which he co-wrote and co-directed. So there's that, not to mention this must be the only one scored by avant-garde indie instrumental act Tortoise.

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Penumbra

Unlike the filmmakers’ previous thriller, you won’t break a ‘Sweat.’

Thriller
Rod Lott
Penumbra is Spanish for "partly in the shadows," which is how we first find the fourth-floor apartment that Margarita Sanchez (Cristina Brondo, Dario Argento's Do You Like Hitchcock?) shows to Jorge Kepler (Berta Muñiz), representative for a prospective renter willing to pay four times the going rate, and for a full year in advance.

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Jersey Shore Shark Attack

Goombahs and gore galore.

Comedy
Rod Lott
With one of those titles that doubles as a story summary, Jersey Shore Shark Attack is the rare made-for-Syfy film that has more to it than said title.

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Elevator

Has more ups than downs.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Stop me if this sounds familiar: a handful of people trapped in an elevator, in a life-or-death situation, and one of them is not who he or she seems to be.

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The Moth Diaries

Be drawn to its mild flame.

Horror
Rod Lott
Director Mary Harron's The Moth Diaries is a coming-as-age film in the same way her American Psycho was a Wall Street portrait.

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

One in the Chamber

Relax, it's a blank.

Action
Rod Lott
While it's safe to say Dolph Lundgren will never win an Academy Award, the Expendable's performance in One in the Chamber runs rings around his co-star who did. (To be fair, that Oscar winner is Cuba Gooding Jr., whose statuette the Academy likely wishes it could revoke, but still.)

 

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Lisztomania

Sex, symphonies and slapstick — all key to Ken Russell’s cult classic.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Ken Russell was either a genius or a madman, but more likely both. The iconoclastic filmmaker made movies that were loved by many — Tommy, Altered States, The Devils, Crimes of Passion — but despised by many, many more. Regardless of your opinion of them, one cannot deny they are different.

 

Monday, August 20, 2012