Word: charm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...some perverse way Fedora is an entertaining film. It is not cynical. There is a weird charm in its enthusiastic embrace of antique cinematic conventions and, more important, a certain daring in the way the piece is written. Throughout their script Wilder and Diamond are ready to undercut their melodrama in order to make judgments ranging from the sly to the nasty about everything from the way to handle the funerals of world-class celebrities to the way the rest of us allow ourselves to be drawn into their self-created dramas. There is a splendid cheekiness...
...finally majestic, even though nobody ever learns what Socrates was thinking. Plato gave the only explanation necessary. The unexamined life, he said, is not worth living. Meanwhile, back at the center, the talk flows on. For now, at least, the dialogue is sufficiently rich in wit, affection and charm to prove that the examined life is well worth living. That, in a year like 1979, should be justification enough...
When I first met her she was so full of sex and gyzm, a real enchantress, she able to charm old winos, animals, and turn the odds on games of chance. We spent all our time in bars that winter, with psychotics and cocaine and morphine and rock'n roll. Me, I was a bit hungover and getting hungry, waiting for tunafish at the counter and she sat near me stuffing her face with coleslaw and milkshakes, dripping down her chin like drool and falling from her mouth...
...perhaps best be defined as comic basrelief. Similarly, Peter Ginna is almost endearing as the burglar who not only convinces his captors to release him but persuades them to take up a collection so he can start out again on the right track. The role is executed with considerable charm and color leaving the audience a bit baffled at what consequently appears an unjust fate...
...anxiety, death and a stunning, offhanded sort of accuracy. Herr is a writer with the talent of a smart bomb. Like James Webb in his fairly straightforward 1978 novel Fields of Fire, Herr is able to locate the thing inside the soldiers, and himself, that enjoys the appalling charm of war. Writes Herr: "But somewhere all the mythic tricks intersected, from the lowest John Wayne wet dream to the most aggravated soldier-poet fantasy, and where they did I believe that everyone knew everything about everyone else, every one of us there a true volunteer. Not that you didn...