Word: alienated
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There was a time when Mafia and Godfather were alien words in the official Soviet vocabulary, and organized crime was considered an inevitable by-product of decadent capitalism. No longer. Inspired by Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign for greater honesty and openness, criminal investigators have begun unraveling a web of crime and corruption, dating back to the Brezhnev years, that stretched from the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan to the highest levels of government in Moscow...
...Airplanes is the story of M. (Rocco Sisto), a timid Manhattanite who, while walking his date home one night, finds himself transported to an alien ship, where spacemen subject him to various medical experiments, then release him with a warning to forget everything. M.'s struggle to remember, and to tell the world, is at the heart of the piece...
Glass's music adds the final layer to this psychodrama, and he responds with one of his most daring scores. From the arresting opening chords that symbolize the lurking spacemen -- an alien harmonic system that makes sense to them but not us -- to the striking stretch of C-major that underpins poor M.'s longings for a girlfriend, this primal scream of angst surges and soars on an electric current of inspiration...
...plot to this movie. Murphy plays Akeem, surprisingly liberated prince of the tradition-bound fantasyland of Zamunda, who travels incognito with his friend Semmi (Hall) to look for an equally liberated bride in America (specifically, Queens, N.Y.). The plot provides for a familiar satirical set-up: naive, good-hearted alien exposes by juxtaposition the follies of American customs. The plot is about as predictable as an Orioles game; it exists only as a framework on which to hang the gags...
...Western eyes, the lot of a Soviet woman may seem outrageously unfair. Yet Soviet women find Western attitudes toward marriage and family alien, if not laughable. "Your ideas of independence are a luxury," says Tanya, the English teacher. A small minority speak longingly of organized action to press for women's rights but are afraid that officials would crack down on any such effort. Most, however, are too overwhelmed by the hardships of day-to-day living to squander energy on political and personal issues that for more than two decades have enlivened Western debate about the woman's role...