Theater/Film Reviews
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Evita
Only two nights remain to see the New Line production of ":Evita," at the old CBC on Clayton Road, and it's worth trying to get there. Every performance for the last week has been sold out, so it may not be easy, but I highly recommend it. With John Sparger a wonderful, sardonic, sarcastic Che
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Countdown to Zero
The horrors of a nuclear Holocaust, a ticking warning in the back of almost everyone's mind, are ever-present, perhaps ever-closer whenever a terrorist, or a rogue state, or someone less fair and balanced than even Fox news, discusses the possibility of an atomioc bomb getting loose. Lucy Walker's excellent documentary, "Countdown to Zero," is just
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Great Directors
Like almost all documentaries, the success of "Great Directors" depends on how interested one is in the subject matter, and since this one involves movies, I liked it. Angela Ismailos' film includes 10 interviews with some of her favorites, people like Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach,
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Fela!
There's as much drama as dance, as much pain as pleasure, in "Fela!" the strong, flashy, throbbing musical directed and choreographed brilliantly and with his usual flowing imagination and imagery by Bill T. Jones. I saw it in New York recently, and can highly recommend it to St. Louisans planning vacations. The rhythmic, pulsating Afrobeat
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Promises, Promises
For all its glitter and brightness, for all its Neil Simon one-liners and the talent exploding on the stage of the Robert G. Reim Theatre, there's an underlying bitterness and sadness to "Promises, Promises," the Stages St. Louis production that will run through Aug. 15. Ben Nordstrom inhabits the body and mind of Chuck Baxter
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Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky
I cannot recall ever seeing a movie more strikingly beautiful than "Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky," a fictionalized account of a love affair between the composer and the designer in the 1920s, when the world was recovering from "the war to end all wars." Marie-Helene Sulmoni is credited as production designer, and her work is
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Let It Rain
When times are bad, comedy is good. And a pair of goofy French comedies open today. "Micmacs" is reviewed above, and in the same genre is "Let It Rain," with Agnes Jaoui wearing three hats, as star, director and co-writer with Jean-Pierre Baeri, who also has a major role as a filmmaker who barely knows
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Micmacs
The struggle goes back to the beginning of time, or at least the begining of motion pictures, as writers and directors have matched humor against horror, farce against fear, laughter of the living against the tears of death. Tragedy usually wins out. But in a movie like "Micmacs," we can laugh, and giggle, and even
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The Girl Who Played With Fire
"The Girl Who Played With Fire" is the second book in Stieg Larsson's magnificent trilogy about Lisbeth Salander, equally talented in coaxing the secrets out of a computer or beating them out of an gangster twice her size, and Mikael Blomkvist, the kind of crusading reporter who makes every living reporter or former reporter not
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The Killer Inside Me
It's difficult to feel sorry for a murderous psychopath, especially when he beats up on women, but maybe the blame for the shortcomings of "The Killer Inside Me," belongs to director Michael Winterbottom, who follows almost every blow with a loving camera, then lingers on the faces of the victims as death approaches. Casey Affleck