I’m beginning to think Chris Sparling is trying to carve a screenwriting career as the Tight, Enclosed Spaces Guy. First, he put Ryan Reynolds in a coffin for the entirety of Buried. Now, he’s trapped three young co-workers (played by Men in Black 3‘s Alice Eve, The Hurt Locker‘s Brian Geraghty and The Wackness‘ Josh […]
murder
Posted inArts & Culture
Nobody Else but You
A rather unconventional murder mystery fueled by the power and pain of celebrity, Nobody Else but You plays Saturday night as part of Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s French Cinema Week. Originally titled Poupoupidou in its native France for reasons that quickly become apparent, writer/director Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s film stars Jean-Paul Rouve (La vie en rose) […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Crime Does Not Pay: The Complete Shorts Collection (1935-1947)
Roughly 20 minutes apiece, give or take, these rare scare films are hosted by a guy (or guys, as the identity changes; one has a lazy eye) introducing himself straight to the camera as only “the MGM reporter.” He interviews presumably real-life experts about criminal activities, and then we’re treated to a lengthy re-enactment of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
God Bless America
Frank (Joel Murray, TV’s Mad Men) is tired. Of everything. But mostly how stupid and how ignorant and superficial his fellow Americans have become, how incapable they are of face-to-face conversation, how the only things they seem to believe in are shallow platitudes and singing competitions, how spoiled and disrespectful they allow their children to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Seeking Justice
Now that he’s made two movies that have skipped wide theatrical openings this year on a quick route to video, as Trespass and Seeking Justice have, perhaps it’s time for him to step back and make his next few choices really, really carefully. Here’s the irony: Seeking Justice is one of the better things he’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
D.O.A.
Dennis Quaid stars as English professor Dexter Cornell, who somehow contracts a fatal toxin that glows Re-Animator green and gives him 24 hours to live. Rather than just bang one of his students — well, he does that, too — he sets out to find who’s slipped him one mammoth mickey. And in doing so, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Phantom of Crestwood
Some 55 years before Dino De Laurentiis failed to lure audiences into theaters with the promise of a seven-digit payday for one lucky viewer of the wretched Million Dollar Mystery, RKO and super producers David O. Selznick and Merian C. Cooper launched a different kind of contest. Leading up to Crestwood’s premiere, the story was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bernie
Bernie was also a murderer, as it turned out, convicted in 1997 of killing an 81-year-old widow and stuffing her body in a meat freezer. But in the eyes of townsfolk, that didn’t make him any less lovable. In Bernie, now playing, our antihero is played by Jack Black (Gulliver’s Travels), but it’s not the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dark Crimes
Among the 50 titles here — yes, 50 — are some genuine classics, such as 1950’s D.O.A., Edward G. Robinson in 1947’s The Red House and Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss, but I don’t recommend picking up this massive set for those three, as much better prints can be found from, respectively, Image Entertainment, Film Chest […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The House Across the Street / Homicide
House is the better of the two, opening on the suburbian utopia of Hopkins Street on the morning of April 20. It’s a placid existence, complete with home delivery from the milkman. But when a phony postal worker knocks off a would-be trial witness on the watch of a rookie cop, there goes the neighborhood. […]