Theater/Film Reviews
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Magic Trip
Ah, the 60s. . . . I guess I was too old for them. As the decade began, I was preparing children for kindergarten, and though I spent a little time in San Francisco in 1960 and 61, and enjoyed a shoe shine from a bare-breasted wench, and was a Gaslight Square regular, and was
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Mistakes Were Made
Joe Hanrahan is a man of considerable talent, enough to carry a piece of rather lightweight fluff like "Mistakes Were Made," a long way. In what is basically a one-man show, Hanrahan finds the charm and humor, and the pain, too, in juggling 10 telephone lines while trying to produce a Broadway hit. The play,
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Point Blank
Although the individual chase sequences don’t match “Bullitt” or “The French Connection” for thrilling action, the overall effect of “Point Blank” leaves a viewer staggering from the sheer impact. The French movie, which opens today, is practically a single, 84-minute chase, and the cumulative effect is simply amazing. Director and co-writer Fred Cavaye shows a
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Vincent Wants the Sea
An anorexic girl, a young man who is obsessive-compulsive and another who has Tourette's syndrome will never be mistaken for the Three Musketeers, but there are a few times during "Vincent Wants the Sea," when director Ralf Huettner makes a pretty good case for it. A poor translation of a German pun makes for an
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The Future
Miranda July often is described as “a precocious filmmaker.” That could easily be translated into self-promoting, untalented, posturing, pretentious and blessed with an oversupply of ego, as shown in “The Future,” which July wrote, directed and stars in as both a silly woman and the voice of an aged cat. Between July and Hamish Linklater,
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Roll On Cowboy
All sorts of movies come through St. Louis, good and bad, old and new. Good, of course, means I like them, while bad means the opposite. And then there's "Roll On Cowboy," which takes us to new depths of boredom. Even if it's a spoof, an attempt to show just how untalented a so-called entertainer
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Thrill Me
There's a small gem at the heart of "Thrill Me," the terse, staccato musical that is in its final weekend at the Gaslight Theatre, and the two-person tale, based on the murder that defined raw crime stories for the 1920's, is a terrific little play. The "thrill killing" of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago ,
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Another Earth
Putting hard-to-believe people in an impossible-to-believe situation brings forth a film with a lot of quirks, but "Another Earth," which opens here today, overcomes a lot of those obstacles. Excellent, understated direction, good writing and fine, low-key acting combine to pose many questions, but few answers, especially to the big question that sits in front
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She Loves Me
Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock wrote musicals that danced on the edge of the treacle pot. Sometimes they fell in, but most of their work was clever and warm, both hands filled with love as they reached out to their audience. Their shows included "Fiddler on the Roof," "Fiorello!" "The Apple Tree," and "She Loves
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The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" is an ever-popular novel that seems aimed at women. It's a love story, and a tale of an orphaned girl who struggles with — and defeats — a pair of well-born Englishmen whose thick-headedness (that's Archibald) and greed (take a bow, Neville) is surpassed only by their stubbornness. It's