Just as the winter season, with all its prestige-laden Oscar bait seriousness, can be a drag for action-heads and gorehounds, the summer Hollywood season can be a dreadful time for the artsy filmgoer.
But while the season is kicking off strong right now with some big action-adventures and theatrical barnstormer “Sinners,” there are still plenty of opportunities for any fan of the headier side of cinema to get their artistic and foreign film fix.
Between an intriguingly daring anti-biopic, a fable-esque Japanese animation, and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Art House Expanded series – featuring little-seen subversive gems and bold, new filmic deconstructions – there’s still a wide selection of movies for those that are tired of all the blockbusters and explosions.
‘Nightshift’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – May 22nd through May 23rd
Largely unseeable for decades, this dreamy, oddball view into London’s early-Eighties nighttime underground has been plucked from obscurity and legend and newly restored for a 4K presentation around the US.
From British filmmaking contrarian Robina Rose, “Nightshift” is simply one night on the job with the front desk clerk of a small, strange hotel in inner-city London in 1981, weaving through the increasingly confounding – and potentially dangerous – parade of late-night guests and visitors, each bringing their own moods and atmospheres.
Rose developed the film out of her own experiences working the actual overnight shift at the same hotel in the film, and even cast it all primarily from her own circle of London punk scene disruptors, in particular placing punk style icon Jordan in the lead role.
At just over an hour long, “Nightshift” is something of an anti-narrative. It eschews anything like traditional structure or storytelling to instead explore the gravitational pull of personalities and personas as each new guest brings their own surreal world through the doors.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
‘I’m Not There’ – Rodeo Cinema – May 31st through June 1st
Years before “A Complete Unknown” strolled into theaters with a scarf and a guitar case and started generating Oscar buzz with its mostly straightforward and reverent biopic-style take on the life of Bob Dylan, 2007’s “I’m Not There” arguably did a much better job of capturing the singer-songwriter’s mercurial mystique.
Rather than attempt anything like a traditional biopic of Dylan, iconoclastic director Todd Haynes attempted instead to examine the many reinventions and revisions of Dylan’s life and personality by casting six different actors in six wholly separate vignettes.
That central role (never once named “Bob Dylan”) shifts through some of the finest actors of modern cinema, from Christian Bale to Ben Whishaw to Richard Gere to young Marcus Carl Franklin to the tragically departed Heath Ledger in one of his final performances.
But the standout is inarguably Cate Blanchett, who embodies Dylan at the same point in his life and fame that Timothee Chalamet embodied in the second half of “’A Complete Unknown,” all unkempt hair and sunglasses and black suit.
Maybe it’s her effortless mysteriousness, her easy giddiness, or her impenetrable comfort sinking into the nasally voice and wiry bodily frame, but I’ll venture to say that she’s even better in the role of that period than Chalamet.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit rodeocinema.org.
‘Wolf Children’ – Cinemark Tinseltown – Now Playing
Another underseen offering (by Americans, at least) newly restored and re-released in 4K for 2025, Mamoru Hosoda’s “Wolf Children” dates only back to 2012, but has become something of a quiet cult classic among some Japanese animation lovers.
While many of the great animated classics of Japanese cinema – most particularly those from the legendary Studio Ghibli – explore themes of childlike wonder and coming-of-age examinations of young characters evolving, “Wolf Children” instead turns the focus to the mother of two such precocious, magical kids.
The story follows Hana as she falls in love and starts a family with a werewolf, producing two half-wolf children.
When hunters kill her lover, the story becomes one of motherhood, of parental paranoia, and of the challenges of raising children that you know transcend the world around them, and that you know that world will never fully understand or accept.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit cinemark.com.
‘You Burn Me’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – May 24th through May 25th
If all of those other artful options are somehow still too accessible and straightforward for your tastes, then you’ll be needing this newest entry into OKCMOA’s Art House Expanded series.
Argentine director Matías Piñeiro’s “You Burn Me” presents a speculative conversation between ancient Greek poet Sappho and mythical siren goddess Britomartis, both of whom are said to have died after jumping into the ocean, Sappho after having her love rejected and Britomartis after her rejections of love went ignored.
The “action” of the film – if it can indeed be called action – is largely relegated to the two women in conversation.
But if that’s all still not experimental and esoteric enough for you, Piñeiro also spends the film exploring the footnotes of their stories with interjections, textual explorations, and ruminations on the nature of film adaptation and cinematic interpretation itself, with the film effectively becoming its own behind-the-scenes commentary.
Talk about heady stuff.
Some of the most subversively artful and creatively experimental film of recent years has come out of Argentina, and this looks to be another solid entry into that strange, contemplative company.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
