Theater/Film Reviews
-
Winter’s Bone
Shot on location in the sparse woods and sullen landscape of southwest Missouri, where a car and a washing machine, neither in working order, serve as front-yard ornaments, "Winter's Bone" is an excellent movie, with fine, on-the-money performances. It's pessimistic and depressing, discusses family loyalty that has turned to stupidity and lives in the sub-culture
-
Solitary Man
Michael Douglas doesn't have all the rights to playing rotten guys, but he has most of them. His Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street" set a standard, and apparently just to keep in shape for the sequel, coming out later in the year, he stars in a very good movie, "Solitary Man." He is not as
-
Sweetgrass
Several years ago, a Super Bowl commercial humorously dealt with herding cats, a chaotic way to spend some time. Cats, however, have nothing on sheep, as shown in "Sweetgrass," a documentary that follows a huge herd of sheep for most of a year, from shearing and birthing in the spring to summer in the high
-
Holy Rollers
Jesse Eisenberg's other prominent, well-acted role this week is in "Holy Rollers," which has no connection with in-line skating, but is a standard tale of a minority (the Hasidic Jewish community in this case) trying to speed up its climb through the ranks of American society with a slick, but illegal idea. Think of dozens
-
Now I Ask You
He almost reviewed it himself. Some time after Eugene O'Neill wrote "Now I Ask You,": in 1916, he said, "It's not my sort of stuff, but it's a damn good idea for a popular success." For the man who wrote "A Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Desire Under the Elms" and "The Iceman Cometh," among
-
The Golden Ticket
Roald Dahl wrote stories about children that were not for children to read. A writer who had lots of problems and a life that wasn't always kind, Dahl was often dark and bitter, and children who misbehaved could be subjected to awful punishments. But Peter Ash and Donald Sturrock, with a fine cast of singers
-
Our Town
Thornton Wilder's classic American play, "Our Town," which opened the other night as a strong, intelligent, entertaining production by Stray Dog Theatre, is a drama most people know about, but is not performed often enough on any sort of professional level. Why? Well, it has 24 characters who show up on stage and off, here
-
The State of Marriage
Political theater, and especially political theater with a strong social message, can turn into a polemic faster than Lou Brock stealing a base, and then it tends to become heavy and, frankly, boring. So it's a tribute to Joan Lipkin and the cast of "The State of Marriage," that they mostly avoid the deadly pothole.
-
IMAX Hubble
The giant IMAX movie screen at the St. Louis Science Center is perfect for the mind-boggling expanses of outer space, which makes its new feature, "Hubble," a glorious experience. The 45-minute film opens today, and while the tense experiences of repair work cut into the time I would prefer be devoted to astronomical glories, it's
-
Please Give
People feel guilty for many reasons, some legitimate and some not. They have many methods for assuaging this guilt. Catherine Keener, as Kate in "Please Give," tosses food and money at panhandling or homeless New Yorkers. She's obsessed by these street people, and by her re-sale shop, and she has little time for her 15-year-old