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 […]
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Bath Salt Zombies
Set in New York City, the film imagines such a huge crackdown on “bath salts” — a real-life drug currently making headlines for its zombie-like effects on users — that one enterprising chemist has synthesized it in cigarette form. Smoking it, however, proves even more addictive than usual, causing withdrawal symptoms so bad “it will […]
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The Great Gildersleeve Movie Collection
In other words, think of him as the Frasier of the 1940s. As first glimpsed by us in 1942’s The Great Gildersleeve, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is an “overstuffed walrus” with a scary laugh and a deep, singsongy voice. He also serves as guardian to his orphaned niece and nephew (Nancy Gates and Freddie Mercer), but […]
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Amour
In other words, the guy is definitely not the lovey-dovey type. But that unblinking, cold-blooded aesthetic is largely what makes Amour, which opens Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, so remarkable. In its depiction of an elderly Parisian couple coming to terms with illness and looming death, the film is almost brutal in its […]
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Seven Psychopaths
Working again with McDonagh, Colin Farrell (Total Recall) is Marty, a screenwriter having troubles on the job — all he has on paper is a title — and at home with his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish, Sucker Punch). These pale to the life-or-death situation his slacker pal, Billy (Sam Rockwell, The Sitter), gets him into, involving […]
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Nobody Gets Out Alive
Good movies, regardless of classification, are going to come from those are filmmakers vs. fans. The current wave from the latter leaves a lot to be desired, as they approach projects from a narrow-focus angle that eschews objectivity and regurgitates a mishmash of titles they’ve seen without adding anything new. Recent offenders include Mimesis and […]
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The Factory
Skipping theaters and debuting on DVD free of digital bells and whistles, the Dark Castle Entertainment thriller exactly lacking in famous faces, with John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter in the leads as partnering police detectives in snowy Buffalo, N.Y. Mike Fletcher (Cusack, The Raven) is an 18-year veteran of the force obsessed with a longtime […]