Ann Lemons Pollack

  • Roving Mars

    Combining the amazing skills of NASA and Walt Disney Pictures should provide a movie that is something special, and “Roving Mars,” on which the two collaborated, is exactly that. It opens today at the St. Louis Science Center, where the IMAX projection makes it even more amazing. The cynical curmudgeonly part of me realizes that

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  • Griff the Invisible

    There are times when the soul yearns for silly. And Leon Ford, an Australian writer-director, is here to provide with "Griff the Invisible," a mockery of super-hero movies with Ryan Kwanten just perfect as our title character, who checks the sky regularly in case the police commissioner is looking for him. In real life, Griff

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  • Victor/Victoria

    In some respects, Kirkwood celebrated a "coming out" party at the Robert Reim Theatre last night, where Stages St. Louis opened "Victor/Victoria," a mostly tuneful tale of a soprano who poses as a man impersonating a woman, and uses the gimmick to get a singing job in a Paris nightclub in the 1930s. It's based

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  • Big Sky Cafe

    It's hard to believe Big Sky has been feeding people for nearly 20 years. The kitchen of Chef Colleen Clawson is carefully updating its American comfort food menu, keeping the favorites and trying new things, too. (The very talented Lisa Slay is executive chef of all Tim Mallett restaurants.) That means the wonderful macaroni and

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  • New Orleans: Brennan’s

    Given a fairly wide iconoclastic streak in our makeup, we passed on the tourist tradition of breakfast at Brennan’s on a recent visit to New Orleans, where post-Katrina recovery has been at least a partial success. Instead, on a quiet Sunday night, we dined in the big pink house on Royal Street, and we departed

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  • The Winners

    It’s not an uncommon male fantasy, inviting a comely, curvy young woman to share the marriage bed with him and his wife, fulfilling their sexual ideas, kissing and touching and and holding and becoming excited. It’s certainly one Cassie and Kurt talk about in “The Winners,” which is in its world premiere run at Hot

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  • Red

    It's a veritable gullywasher, a torrent of words from Bryan Dykstra and Matthew Carlson. They're John Logan's words, and they pour from the stage in brilliant, mesmerizing style in "Red," which opened the 2011-12 season of the Repertory Theatre last night at the Loretto-Hilton Center. "Red," which won a Tony Award in 2010, is a

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  • End Days

    Apocalypse not now. . . .Apocalypse when. . . . Apocalypse on Wednesday. . . . Whenever. . . . "End Days," a comedy about the end of the world, the Rapture and all sorts of semi-religious situations, is a funny play with serious overtones. It opened as the New Jewish Theatre began its 15th

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  • Brighton Rock

    This is the second time around for "Brighton Rock," from a Graham Greene masterpiece. It's not quite up to the 1947 original, when a young Richard Attenborough, later to direct "Gandhi," made Pinkie Brown into a frightening killer, but it's an effective thriller with fine performances from Andrea Riseborough as Rose, who loves Pinkie beyond

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  • The Swell Season

    "The Swell Season" is not an overture to autumn, but the name of a singing duo — he's Irish, she's Czech — and a film about their adventures in the folk-rock world. It opens tomorrow as part of the Webster University Film Series, and like all movies about performers, if you like the group, you'll

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