Word: charmingly
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Like most egotists, Signorile keeps breaking out in rashes of infantilism. It gives his writing a reckless charm. It also preserves the delusion that he can do nasty things to people for their own good...
...generally wants to maintain a certain distance from dysfunction; you don't want it leaping across the footlights to land, falsely grinning, falsely ingratiating, in your lap. But it is, of course, precisely the camera's business to facilitate such leaps. Even so, if these people had any real charm, if their oddity were cloaked in wit, if their rather chilly creator brought some real compassion to these sealed-off lives, we might take them more readily to heart. If they suggested some generalized insights about lower-middle-class life, we might more readily forgive their dreary excesses...
...harrowing anecdotes are told with apparent amusement that makes them all the scarier. The group leader recalls falling into the men's movement as a scam after a sexual-harassment case ended his college teaching career. Wendt depicts, with Normesque what-the-hey gestures and overstuffed teddy-bear charm, how he plunged far beyond his means to display machismo to fellow traders in the pit. These men clearly ought to be in search of something. But they can't see the forest or the trees...
...according to Nash, who has already produced three plays in the ghostly echo-chamber, the pool has a special charm as a theater...
...give inspired performances. As Elsa, Poreba sharply vents her anger and frustration with the world with convincing exhaustion, while Helen's quiet, troubled presence spreads gradually around them in slow, careful gestures. While Poreba's strength lies in her moving, often powerful, expression, Sun's lies in her understated charm and ability to command the scene when necessary. Artie Wu, the third and final member of the cast, does a very good job with a much smaller role as the local minister, successfully drawing out the complex depth of Marius' character in its struggle to maintain faith in himself...