Coming in before the New Year’s bell is Sanitarium, in which three unknown directors contribute tales exploring mental illness, each centered on a patient at a padded-wall institution run by Dr. Stenson (Malcolm McDowell, Silent Night), our host. First up, in “Figuratively Speaking,” an artist played by Scrooge‘s John Glover (sporting dreadlocks that make him […]
cinema
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Unhung Hero
That poor schmo left kneeling awkwardly is Patrick Moote, a Los Angeles actor/comedian who later found out that his girlfriend wouldn’t accept his marriage proposal for one teeny-tiny reason: his penis. As in, it’s too small. Until her admission, Moote wasn’t aware of his deficiency, so he instantly joined one of the 2 billion men […]
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Muscle Shoals
Even in what has been an impressive year for the rock ’n’ roll documentary — or rockumentary, if you wanna sound like Rolling Stone magazine — Muscle Shoals stands out. How could it not? The film, which screens Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, chronicles the irresistible oddity of Muscle Shoals, […]
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Escape from Tomorrow
With Escape from Tomorrow, one fears the story behind the movie would loom larger than the movie itself. Luckily, that is not the case. After all, it opens with a decapitation on Disney World’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. For those who don’t know, much of Escape from Tomorrow was shot surreptitiously at Disney […]
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Inside Llewyn Davis
There are several shots in Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest that (intentionally) offer a similar imagery, only with one very significant difference: Its protagonist, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, Drive), is a lone wolf in the truest sense — aloof, misunderstood and tragically unsuccessful in his personal and professional endeavors. Set in 1961, the film opens […]
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All the Boys Love Mandy Lane / Mischief Night
Well, “new” may be inaccurate when we’re talking about All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Despite being a festival-circuit hit in 2006, the debut film from director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies, 50/50) sat unreleased until now. The seven-year wait proves not to be worth it. It’s easy to see why all those boys love (read: […]
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Getaway / Fast & Furious 6
Then arrives Getaway, which put the brakes on Hawke’s streak. The film goes nowhere, despite centering on a man and a car on a fast and furious mission. As a former NASCAR driver, Hawke’s character is tasked with playing a “game.” His wife (soap actress Rebecca Budig) has been kidnapped, and if he wants to […]
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Kill Your Darlings
Yes, it’s another biopic about the aforementioned famed beat poet—in the past ten years, about five or six movies has been about or featured him as a character—but what makes Kill Your Darlings so different, and infinitely more watchable, is that it’s as big a mishmash of genres as Ginsberg’s words were on the page: we’ve […]
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The Canyons
New to Blu-ray following a much-buzzed-about VOD and limited theatrical run, the IFC Films release casts a voyeuristic eye on Los Angeles couple Tara (tabloid fixture Lindsay Lohan, Liz & Dick) and Christian (porn star James Deen, Anal Buffet 8). They’ve been together for one year, but their bedroom — and other areas of their […]
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Saturn 3
The 1980 box-office bomb takes place on an experimental research station on a moon of the title’s ringed planet. For three years, scientist Adam (ol’ butt-chinned Kirk Douglas) has worked there to solve Earth’s hunger problem hydroponically, alongside Alex (Farrah Fawcett, The Cannonball Run), his much younger partner — in the lab and the space-disco […]