Theater/Film Reviews
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Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino is entitled to march to his own drummer when he directs movies, but when he rewrites history in an ineffective attempt to be funny, or just for his own cute concerns, he goes too far for my taste. That’s my problem with "Inglourious Basterds," which opens today, where he stretches the truth like
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Mary Poppins
It will come as no surprise to learn that banker George Banks’ salary is about to be quadrupled -he’s a banker, after all-but it’s a new and different thrill because the taxpayers will not be stuck for the bill – at least not yet.That news, however, is strictly beside the point in "Mary Poppins," the
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Almost Hollywood
If ever there was truth in movie titles, "Not Quite Hollywood" leads the pack. A documentary and an appreciation of the rowdy side of Australian filmmaking of the 1970s and ‘80s, writer-director Mark Hartley has scoured the archives to create a highly entertaining montage of sex and violence, gore and grandiosity, with a huge range
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
Since there’s no security check when he travels through time, why do Henry’s clothes vanish just as he does, and why does he arrive starkers, often in the middle of a Chicago winter? Well, I don’t know, and neither does Eric Bana, who portrays Henry in "The Time Traveler’s Wife," a slight little love story
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District 9
Peter Jackson made an awful lot of pot-boilers before he hit it big with "Lord of the Rings" and became a Producer-Director with a capital ‘P’ and ‘D.’ The New Zealand filmmaker is back as producer of "District 9," a well-done twist on the-aliens-are-here-let’s-kill-‘em-all movie. Yes, there’s a lot of that, a lot of violence
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Soul Power
Muhammad Ali. Don King. James Brown. Three of the world’s most visible, most entertaining (on more than one level) men, in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974. Ali was there to fight George Foreman for the heavyweight championship in the legendary Rumble in the Jungle, King was organizing both the fight and a three-day music festival to
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Alice in Wonderland
The annual summer feature for children at Stages St. Louis is fun for many reasons, not the least of which is watching the audience respond to live actors. Stages is offering a slick production of the Disney version of "Alice in Wonderland" this week and next at the Kirkwood Community Center, and while the Disney
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In The Loop
Packed with peppery satire and garlicky four-letter words, "In the Loop" is stuffed like a South St. Louis sausage with wit and nasty humor. With barely a pause for breath between the last credits and the first spoken words, it takes aim at American and English politicians in the run-up to the attack on Iraq,
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Julie and Julia
Trying to turn a pair of disparate books into a single movie is an extremely difficult task, and it’s to Nora Ephron’s credit that she has done as well as she did with "Julie and Julia," opening in the St. Louis area today. As a director, Ephron is splendid. The film has excellent pacing, only
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$9.99
Clay-based movie animation, filmed in stop-action, is as tedious a project as can be imagined, and looking at the skill used by director Tatia Rosenthal and her animators provides amusement – and amazement – in "$9.99," an Israeli-Australian collaboration from stories by the Israeli author, Etgar Keret. Unfortunately, the stories don’t extend interest much beyond