Word: bafflements
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...JANE ALEXANDER WAS starring in Harold Pinter's Old Times off-Broadway a decade ago, an unlikely Pinter fan -- Jackie Gleason -- went backstage to ask what the play meant. "I don't know," Alexander replied. "I'm not sure even Mr. Pinter does." Gleason nodded to express his own bafflement, then added, "Hell of an evening though...
...Arsenio, the grievance is personal, though he won't reveal its nature. For Leno, the response is bafflement. "People keep calling me and asking, 'What is this fight between you?' I don't know! I don't know! I haven't said anything bad. This is someone who used to be at my house every day. Although we haven't talked much in the past three years." In a recent phone conversation -- in show-biz terms it was a summit meeting -- Leno asked Hall, "So what's the problem? If you're going to do something...
...that honors both the script's delicacy and the boisterous demands of a date-night movie audience. Baldwin, who breathed this role so naturally in the play's off-Broadway stint that no one else needed apply for the movie version, is a terrific guide through Peter's decent bafflement. Ryan, new to the part, must work hard to get under Rita's skin, which she does beautifully at about the time someone else invades it. And Walker, a stage veteran, has the knack of expressing despair and ecstasy with the sag of a jaw, the wink of a smile...
...crazy enough for the audience to doubt whether she is right, as must happen to sustain tension. Dreyfuss goes right to the expedient, exploitative core of the husband without visiting the needed surface idealism and charm. Hackman's performance does not engage guilt or innocence; it remains stuck at bafflement throughout. These are high-voltage talents giving low-wattage portrayals...
...committed to celluloid. His early career traced a paradigmatic arc of hotshot movie eminence, from a $20,000 underground classic (Eraserhead in 1977) to a $5 million Oscar nominee (The Elephant Man in 1980) to a $50 million sci-fi dud (Dune in 1984). Each film had segments of bafflement and spectral beauty. But Hollywood, looking at the escalating price tags and plummeting ticket sales, wrote the director off. So Lynch made Blue Velvet (1986), a magnificent revenge drama -- his revenge on fettered movie conventions -- about small-town life and lust, drugs and death. Twin Peaks, you could...