Cinema
Films showing in the St. Louis region
THE SQUARE film review
Ruben Ostlund’s Swedish satire THE SQUARE goes after art world, modern hypocrisy – By Cate Marquis – Ruben Ostlund’s satire THE SQUARE was Cannes’ Palme D’Or winner this year but this ambitious film is a decidedly unusual winner. Ostlund’s previous film, FORCE MAJEURE, explored a single morally-bad choice in a caustically comic way. THE…
VICTORIA AND ABDUL film review
– By Cate Marquis – Director Stephen Frears’ funny, charming VICTORIA AND ABDUL was inspired by a real event late in the life of Queen Victoria, when the aging British monarch had her mood brighten by the arrival of a visitor from India, much to the dismay of her advisers and her son, the crown…
BATTLE OF THE SEXES film review by Mark Glass
– By Mark Glass – Those of us old enough to remember the highly-publicized 1973 tennis matches between Bobby Riggs and the top two professional women will find this dramedy treatment of those lives and times highly entertaining…as were the events when they unfolded. Younger viewers may be surprised by how drastically our culture…
I DO…UNTIL I DON’T film review
– By Cate Marquis – When divorce laws loosened and sexual mores changed in the ’60s and ’70s, there was a spate of “why marry” films. Although they had contemporary settings, the comedies generally followed the outline of 18th century bedroom farce, with warring couples, bed-hopping and true love winning in the end. Director/writer/star Lake…
MENASHE film review
– By Cate Marquis – MENASHE is a heartfelt Yiddish-language drama about a widowed Hasidic Jewish father man trying to regain custody of his son. Director Joshua Weinstein gives us an intriguing glimpse inside New York’s Hasidic community, although it is not always an affectionate one. Still, this is an excellent little film that…
THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD film review
– By Mark Glass – THE HITMAN’S BODYGUARD has all the first-rate action and humor of Deadpool without needing to know superhero lore to get the jokes. After many films, the first time I truly enjoyed a Ryan Reynolds performance was in last year’s hilarious spoof of all things Marvel and superheroesque, DEADPOOL. He…
LOGAN LUCKY film review
– By Mark Glass – LOGAN LUCKY’s redneck variation on Ocean’s Eleven and other slick caper flicks makes crime pay – at least for the viewers. If light-hearted heist films like OCEAN’S ELEVEN or THE ITALIAN JOB (either the originals or re-makes of both) were stripped of their glamorous settings and star power, this…
THE WOMEN’S BALCONY film review
– By Cate Marquis – Charming and warm, the Israeli comedy “The Women’s Balcony” entertains but also captures an appealing feeling of community, and even family, that being part of a religious congregation can bring. It is no small feat. That sense of a close, happy congregation was inspired by screenwriter Shlomit Nehama’s own…
13 MINUTES film review
– By Cate Marquis – We all know there were attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Germany late in World War II but what if he had been assassinated in November 1939? Think how history would have changed, particularly for Jews. Such as assassination attempt actually was made, by a lone man using a…
LADY MACBETH film review
– By Cate Marquis – Director William Oldroyd’s LADY MACBETH is not Shakespeare but it is certainly Shakespearean in its bloody mix of murder and sex. The story is not about Shakespeare’s murderously ambitious character but is based on a 19th century Russian novel, “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” by Nikolai Leskov, inspired…