Theater/Film Reviews
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You Can’t Take It With You
The setup lines are familiar, the surprises few. And yet, "You Can't Take It With You" proves that theatrical classics, with the style of the Energizer Bunny, just keep running and running. Even dozens of bad school productions (except for our kids, of course), and worse, ego-driven amateur productions cannot spoil the hope and warmth
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Breathless
The re-release of the classic film, "Breathless," for its 50th anniversary, marks a lot more than the passage of a half-century and a startling message of aging for some of us. The movie makes us look at changing tastes, and values, but it remains a great, ground-breaking film while it reminds us that classic story-telling
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Flipped
Rob Reiner, who gained fame and fortune as "Meathead," in "All in the Family," grew up to carry a light and lovely touch as a writer and director, very much like that of Jean Shepherd, who wrote radio plays about the Midwest as no one else did. Reiner, responsible for "The Princess Bride," and "Stand
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Only When I Dance
We're in a busy season for dance documentaries; this week it's the slums of Rio de Janiero for "Only When I Dance," part of the Webster (University) Film Series; last week we looked at China in "Mao's Last Dancer." The dancing sequences are charming, often exciting; the stories aren't much, and the fact that my
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State Fair
It's as corny as Kansas in August, as high as an elephant's eye on the Fourth of July, busting out all over as if it were June. That's "State Fair," a total entertainment with a fabulous score and exceptional talent. It opened the final 2010 production of Stages St. Louis last night at the Robert
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Sam and Laura
It's still a baby, its umbilical cord barely severed. It totters on wobbly legs but it doesn't fall. It makes noises but they are not all easy to understand. It's a love story which, like all love stories, is filled with pain and frustration. It's a play, a new, young play about Missouri's most famous
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Animal Kingdom
The lions of the opening shots of "Animal Kingdom," set in a Melbourne suburb, point up the symbolism of a family of the animals under the leadership of the lioness, an evil, non-moral, wicked, grasping mom who loves her children not wisely but too well, to the point where her kisses last just too-long-enough to
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Mao’s Last Dancer
The Australia director Bruce Beresford has given us some wonderful movies, like "Breaker Morant," about 30 years ago, and winners like "Driving Miss Daisy," "Tender Mercies" and "Crimes of the Heart." A great surprise to see a trite tear-jerker like "Mao's Last Dancer," which opens here today. Based on the autobiography of Chinese dancer
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Crumbs From the Table of Joy
One of the problems with being a young playwright is a determination to gather everything you want to say into the play you're writing. The result may be entertaining, but it also brings extra length, too many words (thank you, Peter Shaffer), some artificiality in setting up straw men and knocking them down and the
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Crumbs From the Table of Joy
One of the problems with being a young playwright is a determination to gather everything you want to say into the play you're writing. The result may be entertaining, but it also brings extra length, too many words (thank you, Peter Shaffer), some artificiality in setting up straw men and knocking them down and the