Get weird, wild, whimsical with OKC film screenings this week

Last Updated on April 25, 2024, 11:27 AM | Published: April 25, 2024

It’s the last weekend of April, and all across the OKC Metro, that means one thing: festivals.

The double-whammy of OKC’s Festival of the Arts and the Norman Music Festival means that crowds thousands strong will be braving the elements, disregarding the forecasts, and joining the throngs for live music, visual arts, food, and more.

But there’s another festival happening this weekend right next door to the Festival of the Arts that you might not know about, a mini film festival that’s designed to challenge everything you think you know about filmmaking and cinema.

But don’t worry, because after you’ve had all your notions of moviemaking traditionalism shattered, there’s a host of comforting throwback classics coming to city theaters to help get you back on track.

‘Wide Open Experimental Film Festival’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – Friday, April 26th through Sunday, April 28th

In partnership with Oklahoma City University’s Film Studies Department, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is presenting this miniature indie film festival that looks to defy all the tired expectations and assumptions of what film is supposed to be.

Featuring nearly 60 strange, mostly indescribable shorts ranging from as long as 20 minutes to as short as a minute and a half, the WOEFF is organized by OCU Film students themselves, giving them the rare opportunity to create a lineup that speaks to the aesthetics and psychologies they’re developing.

Also, it’s totally free, so if you’re in Bicentennial Park for the Arts Fest, you can pop next door to OKCMOA any time and catch one of WOEFF’s five “programs,” each featuring 80 minutes of shorts.

Of course, experimental film, by nature, is pretty hard to define, with many of the entries focused primarily on non-narrative visuals and outright cinematic subversion.

It’s the kind of experience that makes you feel like an impressionable kid again, only beginning to discover the actual possibilities and potential of filmmaking.

The Wide Open Experimental Film Festival at OKCMOA is free to the public.

For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com and wideopenff.com.

‘The Mummy: 25th Anniversary’ – Flix Brewhouse & Harkins Theatres Bricktown – Now Playing

Once you’ve had your mind blown by all the experimentation, the rest of the week’s highlights will keep you feeling like a kid again in all the best, most nostalgic ways, beginning with this millennial masterpiece of adventure.

1999’s “The Mummy” felt like a gamble upon its first release, rehashing the time-worn monster fantasy for the often cross-armed, irony-hungry audiences of the late 90s.

But the film’s commitment to its swashbuckling, 1940s adventure style, and its infinitely watchable cast anchored by future Oscar-winners Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser endeared this new “Mummy” to the younger audiences that grew up with its thrills for more than two decades now.

Expect to see plenty of 30-somethings rushing to the theater to catch this irrepressibly fun and enduringly thrilling tentpole of their formative years on the big screen once again.

For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit harkins.com and flixbrewhouse.com.

‘Donnie Darko’ presented by VHS & Chill – Point A Gallery – Thursday, May 2nd 

The same kids that grew up with the fun and youthful excitement of “The Mummy” would find themselves creeping into the dark uncertainties and strange anxieties of teenagerdom by the time Richard Kelly’s cult masterpiece “Donnie Darko” dropped into their consciousness.

Almost entirely ignored when it was first released in 2001, “Donnie Darko” eventually developed a rabid cult a few years later on DVD, sparked by one of the most insane, creatively oddball plots imaginable.

A teenage boy in the late 80s is awoken by a demonically faced six-foot rabbit man that tells him the world will end in 28 days. As he’s sleepwalking to receive this prophecy, a jet engine falls out of the sky and crashes into his bedroom, right where he would’ve been sleeping.

What follows is a suburban teen odyssey through love, fear, family, dreams, death, wormholes, and time travel, always taking seriously the fracturing state of Donnie’s young mind, set to maybe the best 80s indie/goth soundtrack ever.

Over the past couple decades, “Donnie Darko” has become, in many minds, something of a relic of the too-serious, too-dark Hot Topic generation, but those people have maybe just grown up and forgotten just how accurate its depiction of being a weird, outcast teenager felt.

We all believed that the world was ending, and we all believed that we alone were at the center of it.

OKC-based guerilla screener organizers VHS & Chill will be hosting “Darko” in a special free screening at Point A Gallery on 39th Street on May 2nd, so if you’ve never experienced this trip of a film, or if you’re just aching to relive those darkest of teenage days, here’s your chance.

This event is free, but it’s also 18+ only.

For more info, visit pointa.space and check out facebook.com/vhsandchill.

‘Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace’ – Rodeo Cinema Stockyards – Saturday, May 4th

Look, not everyone loves it, but some people love it, particularly the ones that were young, wide-eyed kids when it hit theaters in 1999.

Yes, the acting and the dialogue are all mostly awful (even from the surprising number of remarkable talents,) yes the CG looks like a bad cartoon by modern standards, and yes Jar Jar Binks is still one of the worst characters in all of cinema history.

But if you’re a late millennial wanting to revisit your childhood and recognize the annual Star Wars Day on May the Fourth, then this is likely to be the way to celebrate.

Hey, at least you get that inarguably awesome two-on-one lightsaber battle and some of John Williams’ most unforgettable score work.

For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit rodeocinema.org.

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