In a role that should have earned her an Academy Award nomination (but I suspect the old-fart contingent couldn’t make it through the film, if it tried at all), Ann Dowd (Side Effects) gets the role of her long character-actress career as Sandra, manager of a fictional fast-food restaurant. Her shift at ChickWich starts as […]
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The Master
Up for three Academy Awards on Sunday, all for its main performances, the inspired-by-Scientology-but-not-really drama follows Navy vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line) as he returns home post-WWII to find he never really had a home to begin with. He doesn’t “fit” anywhere; his string of tenuous relationships — with women, with jobs […]
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The Frankenstein Theory
Wait, wait! Don’t run off! This one’s better than the average entry, even if it’s not so revolutionary to change the minds of those who despise the delivery system. It opens Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall, 2501 W. Memorial — one of about 15 theaters nationwide to get it. The picture’s snowy setting is reason […]
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Argo
It’s a testament to the skills of the filmmakers that Argo delivers a deluge of suspense even when its ending is never in doubt. Up for seven Oscars on Sunday, it was released earlier this week on Blu-ray and DVD. There’s no way the movie industry could have resisted this stranger-than-fiction yarn. The film chronicles […]
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The Bay
Inspired by an actual event in which fish and birds inexplicably turned up dead in mass quantities, the movie takes place in Claridge, Md., as the Chesapeake Bay celebrates Independence Day in 2009. Much of the footage we see comes courtesy of TV news intern Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue, Pitch Perfect) via a WikiLeaks-esque site, […]
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Eastbound & Down: The Complete Third Season
In the longest season yet (eight episodes) of HBO’s raunchiest comedy, the washed-up, pot-bellied, coke-snorting blowhard Kenny Powers (Danny McBride, 30 Minutes or Less) now lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The change of locales, however, hasn’t changed him: The minor-league baseball pitcher remains a major-league asshole. In the season opener, an intoxicating reunion with April […]
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Marriage ‘Pains’
According to the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, 32 percent of marriages in the state have ended in divorce — one of the highest divorce rates nationwide. As many Sooner couples find themselves saying “I don’t” more often than “I do,” one unlikely man has taken it upon himself to save these remaining marriages: former teen heartthrob-turned-evangelist […]
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Brooklyn Castle
The feature debut of director Katie Dellamaggiore, the documentary is now available on demand from FilmBuff. While this institution holds more championship chess titles than any other middle school in the nation (26), the film opens with them experiencing loss — well, second place, at least, among 862 teams. They win so often that not […]
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Sinister
Had I been watching it alone, on a dark and stormy night, my neck likely would be sore by the end of it, from making repeated glances behind the couch — you know, just to be safe. It’s 2012’s Insidious: well-built, respectful of viewers’ intelligence and yet genuinely freaky. Ethan Hawke (Daybreakers) plays Ellison Oswalt, […]
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The Imposter
Nicknamed “The Chameleon” by the press, Bourdin is known for having assumed untold hundreds of identities; Bart Layton’s film wisely chooses to focus on just one of those cases. Luckily, it’s a doozy — one so unbelievable, you wouldn’t believe it without the proof. In 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, a 13-year-old boy named Nicholas […]