Word: butlering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...very studied and careful but wooden performance. Screenwriters Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan (Gorillas in the Mist) appear to have gobbled up every quotable line ever attributed to Earhart and then regurgitated it into a script. The results may be mostly accurate (both East to the Dawn, Susan Butler's 1997 biography, and Mary S. Lovell's earlier The Sound of Wings are credited as the basis for the screenplay), but they veer between the stilted and the cheesy...
...Abiding Citizen had no pedigree at all. Based on an original screenplay, it stars Gerard Butler as a decent fellow who, when his wife and daughter are murdered in front of him, is transformed into an evil genius, terrorizing assistant D.A. Jamie Foxx and the rest of Philadelphia with murders of a scheming, Saw-like sadism. Saddled with a scathing 16% score from the "top critics" monitored on Rotten Tomatoes (Wild Things nabbed a gentleman's 68%), Citizen won audiences on star quality and the movie marketplace's lack of other adult-themed melodrama - read: crap for grownups. Younger viewers...
Those are healthy numbers, in miniature, but none of these bijou entries could compete with paranormal ghosts, Gerard Butler's blood lust or Spike Jonze's call to "Let the wild rumpus start...
Both Foxx and Butler must grapple with some of the corniest writing in recent memory. Foxx spends most of the movie trying to seem authoritative and “sassy,” habitually dropping F-bombs just to make his intentions clear, and in one shot, coolly walking away from an explosion as if he deals with them on a daily basis in his law practice. Meanwhile, Butler makes a sad attempt at portraying a psychotic yet profound killer. When a cellmate asks him how he ended up in prison, Butler cryptically responds, “I did what...
...Golden Calf,” tacitly advocates the life of capitalism. At one point, Ostap even says of a parcel, “Inside, there’s everything: palms, girls, the Blue Express, the azure ocean, a white ship, a barely used tuxedo, a Japanese butler, your own pool table, platinum teeth, socks with no holes, dinners cooked with real butter, but most importantly, my little friends, the power and fame that come with money.” Their scheme is the key to something that sounds uncannily similar to the American Dream...