Epic romances span space and time in OKC films in November


Now that the Halloween season is officially behind us and taking all the scares and splatters with it, it’s time for a few romantic, heart-swelling palate cleansers.

No matter how cold and hardened your heart is feeling following the horror holidays and the blistering, never-ending heat, it’s still just about impossible to resist a great epic romance with all the grand emotions from flowing tears to passions as outsized as the silver screen itself.

November screenings at theaters around Oklahoma City bring a range of massively emotional epic romances, including a couple of star-powered new releases, a standout melodrama masterwork, and even a cult classic sci-fi space romp.

But whether they’re traversing time, space, or life itself, each and every one is purely about love.

And don’t we all need that right now?

‘We Live in Time’ – Rodeo Cinema / Harkins Bricktown / Flix Brewhouse – Now Playing

One of the most challenging — perhaps impossible — problems in life is that we know love is always temporary, yet we jump in with both feet anyway, content to ignore the inevitable and pretend that time isn’t after us.

But it becomes significantly more difficult to ignore the unrelenting passage of time when there’s so much less of it than you expected.

And that, in a nutshell, is the heart of “We Live in Time,” the new romantic tear-jerker from director John Crowley and writer Nick Payne.

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Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in “We Live in Time”

Following a couple from their first meeting and early passions through to a devastating health diagnosis and the final stretch of their too-short romance doomed to be cut down by tragedy, the story shirks any traditional structure or chronology to jump around pseudo-randomly across the full span of their love.

Covering years and cutting back and forth across time, their romance unfolds the way that memories cascade and overlap long after the fact, looking back at the most powerful love in your past once it’s truly gone.

And if that’s not already enough to get the tears flowing, you can rest assured that leads Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield are talented enough to really sell it.

“We Live in Time” is playing everywhere now. 

‘Here’ – Harkins Bricktown / Flix Brewhouse / Cinemark Tinseltown – Now Playing

Any long-awaited new offering from directing legend Robert Zemeckis will be an event worthy of celebration, but when he tackles something particularly left-field and arguably experimental, that’s when any filmgoer should take notice.

With “Here,” the man behind “Forrest Gump,” “Contact,” and the iconic “Back to the Future” trilogy attempts a millennia-spanning epic of life and humanism all shot from one single, immobile spot.

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Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in “Here”

From the creation of the Earth to the birth – then death – of the dinosaurs, to the rise of mankind and the eventual construction of an American home in which our singular vantage point becomes an unassuming corner of a simple living room, the focus of the story is its human people.

It even veers into flat-out science-fiction territory as the story continues well into the future beyond them.

Anchored primarily by the unimpeachable talents of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright (reuniting with one another and Zemeckis for the first time since “Gump”,) the film aims for a fly-on-the-wall view into the love and life of two typical people and their family (and world) both before and after them.

Zemeckis has had some serious critical missteps in recent offerings, sure, and there’s already been a lot of criticism aimed at the earnestness and potential heavy-handedness of the romanticism and emotion of “Here.”

But can’t we all put aside our well-practiced cynicism and cold-hearted eye-rolls for 100 minutes and at least appreciate an attempt to place the smallest scale story of human love within the largest scope framework of time and the universe itself? Can’t we just try?

“Here” is playing everywhere now.

‘The Fifth Element’ – Flix Brewhouse – Sunday, November 17th & Wednesday, November 20th 

Okay, if you prefer your sci-fi love stories with a way bigger dose of action, gunfights, spaceships, and aliens, then the odds are good you already know and love 1997’s “The Fifth Element.”

But if you’ve never had the opportunity to catch it on the big screen, then you’ve missed out on one of the greatest experiences of 90s cinema and sci-fi filmgoing.

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Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich in “The Fifth Element”

The movie’s effects and lived-in future-world immersion were not just groundbreaking upon its original release, they were eye-popping and earth-shattering for an entire generation of young sci-fi and fantasy lovers (trust me, I was one of them.)

And it still holds up even now.

But of course, the core of “The Fifth Element” is the love story between Bruce Willis’s world-weary ex-military cab driver and Milla Jovovich’s fierce, fighting Supreme Being incarnate from the moment she (literally) falls into his life to the grand, explosive, 90s action finale.

And as a bonus, you not only get some of the decade’s best makeup and creature effects but also what’s easily one of the best unhinged, scenery-chewing Gary Oldman performances.

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

‘All That Heaven Allows’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – Saturday, November 30th 

There was arguably no greater purveyor of the cinematic melodrama than the legendary Douglas Sirk, and 1955’s “All That Heaven Allows” is surely one of his most enduring masterpieces.

The inimitable screen presence of Jane Wyman stars as a lonely widow whose upper-crust life is upended when she falls for Rock Hudson’s much younger dreamboat gardener.

In classic Sirk fashion, the romance brings the passion and tension, but the uptight 1950s society brings the stakes.

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Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in “All That Heaven Allows”

It was all well and good at the time for an older man to take a younger lover, just as it was (and oddly still is) perfectly acceptable for a male movie lead to be paired with a female love interest decades younger.

But for a woman to do the same – even after the death of her prior beloved – was especially scandalous in 1955, and Sirk’s film zeroes in on the pearl-clutching and hypocrisies just as closely as on the steamy romance of his leads.

Modern audiences sadly don’t seem to fully understand or appreciate the unique appeal, catharsis, and stunning scenes, shots, and costumes of the classic movie melodramas. 

But especially considering the frustratingly persistent (and currently relevant) double standards for the sexes in America – and the stubborn desire by many to return to the myopic values of the 1950s – “All That Heaven Allows” could be essential viewing in 2024.
For showtimes, tickets, and more information, 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.


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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.