Category: Film

  • Oklahoma Film Critics Circle unveils its 2023 best-of awards

    Back in 2006, Kathryn Jenson White, Preston Jones and I launched the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (OFCC) to help promote film in our state. The organization has come a long way since then. As the OFCC does each year, along with most of the world’s film critics, we vote to award the best movies, performances…

  • The Iron Claw (2023)

    Indulge me a quick childhood memory. Please. Preteen Phil (that’s me) was an avid professional wrestling fan. Growing up in Oklahoma City of the late 1970s, I religiously followed Mid-South Wrestling and spent many a Friday night at the State Fairgrounds to see National Wrestling Association stalwarts such as Harley Race (the NWA heavyweight champ!),…

  • Female (1933)

    The car-manufacturing magnate at the center of Female is one tough cookie, a take-no-prisoners mogul by day and take-no-guff seductress by night. That, in a nutshell, sums up the vitals of this 1933 comic gem. The movie is funny, the dialogue whip-smart, and dependable director Michael Curtiz doesn’t outwear things, with the picture clocking in…

  • Best documentaries of 2023

    While 2023 was a banner year for narrative films, at least in my opinion, I was less enthusiastic about the year’s crop of documentaries. There were a handful of standouts, such as the thrilling Beyond Utopia (pictured below), but none of my picks for the Best of 2023 approach what I would consider a masterpiece.…

  • The best movies of 2023

    With the Academy Awards a week away (Sunday, March 10, for you sticklers), this seems like as appropriate a time as any to trot back out my picks for the Best Films of the year that was 2023. For those keeping score at home, my latest ranking has some differences from my initial take back…

  • The Lunchbox (2013)

    Sometimes you must board the wrong train to get to the right station. It’s a bit of wisdom that figures prominently in, and is offered by, The Lunchbox, a sweetly engaging Hindi-language film about two wounded souls who make an accidental but critical connection in the Indian city of Mumbai. What makes an already-appealing movie…

  • Rope (1948)

    Rope is intriguing, if not altogether successful. The picture marked a kind of paradox for Alfred Hitchcock, a master of cinematic storytelling who presented himself with a challenge that appeared almost antithetical to the possibilities of film. In adapting a 1929 play by Patrick Hamilton, the director wanted the story to be experienced in the same…

  • Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

    Back in the day when Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay were still pals, they stumbled upon a winning formula for comedy with 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which goosed TV newsrooms while simultaneously skewering the Dumb American Male over a fire pit. The humor was silly, largely improvisational, and devoted to a spirit…