Nope. Nobody told the filmmakers behind “South Of Heaven,” a crime comedy from Synapse Films release that has its heart in the place, but no story to back up its ambition. Obviously low-budget — note the reliance on fake backgrounds, seemingly borrowed from a high school drama department — the movie tries to get by […]
Rod Lott
Posted inArts & Culture
From tusk till brawn
Somewhere on your Google machines, you can find a Top 10 list of the best arm-wrestling movies of all time. Perched at No. 4 is “Over the Top,” Sylvester Stallone’s 1987 flop opus about the sport. And the other nine spots are completely blank. I’d like to think that even if the chart weren’t a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Traveling Executioner
With an old-timey setting that belies its subject matter, this odd-as-oddball black comedy casts Keach in the title role, traversing early 20th-century America in his Dutch-boy haircut and portable electric chair, going wherever the death-penalty gigs take him. Rather than be menacing, he sends his clients off to death with — well, yes, a fatal […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Mill and the Cross
It is appropriate that Polish director Lech Majewski’s “The Mill and the Cross” is playing Saturday and Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, for two reasons: The English-language film adapts a famous painting, and in adhering to those visuals, stands as a work of art itself. It’s the very definition of “picturesque.” The […]
Posted inNews
‘Fair’ and balanced
The Oklahoma State Fair is something I have looked forward to during my duration at the University of Central Oklahoma, and the fair food is the best part! My personal favorite was the beer-battered, deep-fried bacon. It was beer, bacon and grease — where could you possibly go wrong? Thanks for an engaging look at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mr. Nice
Here, the switch from mere Oxford student to corrupt bad boy is flipped with one look at the stunner Elsa Pataky (“Fast Five“) and a taste of cannabis. From there, the path of Marks (Rhys Ifans, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”) is marked with marriage, divorce, the IRA, MI-6, LSD, hashish, arrests, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Last Circus
Having seen his P.O.W. father murdered during an escape attempt decades before, Javier (Carlos Areces, who looks like ’70s TV staple Ray Buktineca with oversized glasses) joins a circus in 1973 Madrid to follow his family destiny as a clown. Because he was denied a proper childhood, Javier follows his dad’s wishes and becomes a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Page One: Inside The New York Times
No such problem exists with the Times’ own Michael Kinsley, who panned it as “a mess,” but don’t listen to him — I’m guessing most Oklahomans pay no mind to NYT, anyway — because it’s an enormously entertaining work. As the title suggests, this is a fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of what is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Good Neighbors
Awkward, geeky Victor (Jay Baruchel, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”) moves into a Montreal apartment builder and is eager to befriend the other young residents who aren’t nearly as ecstatic: the cat-crazy, Chinese restaurant employee Louise (Emily Hampshire, “Earthsea”) and the wheelchair-bound, smirking Spencer (Scott Speedman, “Barney’s Version“). Maybe they’re skittish because there’s a serial rapist/killer on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Vlog
Yet another faux found-footage flick, “Vlog” chronicles the events in the weeks leading up to the 2008 murder of the cute, busty and sexually promiscuous webcam addict and vlogger Brooke Marks (played by Brooke Marks; my quick research reveals she’s a real-life, NSFW web model who, it should be noted, is very much alive). Roughly […]