St. Louis Movie Reviews - Riverfront Times

Reel It In: SLIFF rolls on with a host of events before the film fest wraps on Sunday

The St. Louis International Film Festival continues this week and wraps with a closing-night party at Blueberry Hill's Duck Room at 8 p.m. on... More>>

By Kristie McClanahan, Alison Sieloff, Matt Kasper, Annie Zaleski, Kristen Hinman and Ella Taylor

Published: November 19, 2008

Film's Rolling: The St. Louis International Film Festival celebrates its seventeenth year

Now in its seventeenth year, the St. Louis International Film Festival continues to bring fresh ideas and bold story telling from all corners of... More>>

By Aimee Levitt, Kristie McClanahan, Annie Zaleski, Chuck Wilson and Alison Sieloff

Published: November 12, 2008

Big Daddies: Role Models is smarter and bawdier than your average boys-to-men movie

Paul Rudd wears the constant look of glazed-eye amusement; everything seems to tickle him, even that which annoys or frustrates or disappoints... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: November 05, 2008

Go Ahead, Make Her Day: Angelina Jolie takes on a serial killer and the system in Clint Eastwood's latest

On a double bill with L.A. Confidential, Chinatown or just about any film made after 1970 about institutional corruption in Los Angeles, Clint... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 29, 2008

We Rent the Night: New York cop-drama holds the audience hostage

Pride and Glory doesn't make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop movie... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: October 22, 2008

The Other Sister: Anne Hathaway makes a compelling bad girl in Jonathan Demme's pedestrian family drama

Those who believe that Jonathan Demme went all soft with Philadelphia and never recovered may not be reassured by his latest movie, an ensemble... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 22, 2008

Bush's Brain: Oliver Stone assigns motive to Dubya's m.o., but at this point, who cares?

W. may be less frenzied than the usual Oliver Stone sensory bombardment, but in revisiting the early '00s by way of the late '60s, this... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 15, 2008

Buzz Kill: The Secret Life of Bees is all honey, no sting

A young woman fights off her brutal husband; a gun goes off; a marble spins on the floor where a toddler sits unattended. From B-movie... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: October 15, 2008

Lies We Can Believe In: Ridley Scott's latest is the post 9/11, tech-savvy terror thriller we deserve

A new kind of war movie for a new kind of war, Body of Lies is about the War on Terror as it is being waged on the ground, in the air, but most... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 08, 2008

Oh, God! You Devil's Advocate: Bill Maher makes an adolescent case against religion

Redolent of Roman decadence and authority gone mad, the title Religulous rolls pleasingly off the tongue. But Bill Maher's one-man standup attack... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 01, 2008

Your Friends and Neighbors: Racial tension, above and below the surface, in Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace

Earlier this year, when I found myself assigned to jury duty on a drug-related trial at the Los Angeles Superior Court, our jury foreman turned... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 17, 2008

Intolerable Cruelty: Remarkably consistent, the Coens make another mockery with Burn After Reading

Masters of the carefully crafted cheap shot, Joel and Ethan Coen have built a career on flippancy. Given their refusal to take anything seriously... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: September 10, 2008

Antibiopic: What We Do Is Secret sanitizes the Germs' punk-rock tragedy

The year 1980 wasn't a great one for musicians in legendary bands. In May, Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis, distraught over his failing marriage... More>>

By Annie Zaleski

Published: September 10, 2008

Towering Cinema: Philippe Petit's World Trade Center tightrope walk was made for the movies

Even as the first girders were laid in the mid-1960s, something about the World Trade Center — that twin-pronged erection jutting from the... More>>

By Jim Ridley

Published: September 03, 2008

Hard-Knock Life: Frozen River may lay it on a bit thick, but Melissa Leo nails the role of a struggling single mom

When I heard that Quentin Tarantino handed the Grand Jury Prize for best feature to Courtney Hunt's Frozen River at this year's Sundance Film... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: August 27, 2008

About a Boy: What happens when a child murderer grows up?

"So fuckin' delicate, people...they die so easily," says a supporting character to the titular Boy A, whose barely audible two-word reply —... More>>

By Ernest Hardy

Published: August 20, 2008

Apocalypse Whatever: Ben Stiller's Hollywood send-up lacks firepower

Early buzz out of Hollywood pegged Tropic Thunder, directed and co-written by star Ben Stiller, as the end-all and be-all of movie-biz parodies... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: August 13, 2008

Mighty Aphrodites: Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson join forces — and some other stuff — in Woody Allen's (winning!) latest

Perhaps this review should begin with a disclaimer: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen's 39th film as writer-director, will do little to... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: August 13, 2008

Not Quite Ripe: Send it back. Bottle Shock's corked.

Bottle Shock, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is a great concept populated by great actors that works hard to make its... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: August 06, 2008

Change You Can't Believe In: Presidential candidates vie (and pander and plead) for one heart and mind in Swing Vote

Swing Vote is an election-themed comedy that's about twice as smart as you expect it to be and still only half as smart as you wish it were. The... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: July 30, 2008

Men Will Be Boys: With Step Brothers, Ferrell, Reilly, McKay & Co. still don't wanna grow up. And thank God for that.

I haven't seen much at the movies in the past two years that has given me as much unbridled comic pleasure as the sight of Will Ferrell as the... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: July 23, 2008

Shooting Stars: St. Louis and homegrown hoopsters shine in Streetballers

Streetballers bills itself as an "Irish-urban drama" exploring the lives of two junior-college basketball players and their struggles within a... More>>

By Chad Garrison

Published: July 16, 2008

Dark Night: This kingdom is built on sneaky filming in the Florida Keys

For part of the production of Mosquito Kingdom, the cast and crew traveled to an island in the Florida Keys and shot the film without permits on... More>>

By Keegan Hamilton

Published: July 16, 2008

Showcase Short Cuts

Advertising for the Mob It sounds ridiculous: Hopeless failure of an adman gets canned from his twelfth agency and starts a crime family. The... More>>

By Kristen Hinman and Kristy Wendt

Published: July 16, 2008