Word: comic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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MORE DIE OF HEARTBREAK by Saul Bellow. An eminent botanist is the hapless hero of the Nobel laureate's rueful, comic tale of love and money among the intellectuals...
INNERSPACE Sci-fi satires may finally be B.O. poison, but Director Joe Dante knows how to send the genre out (and up) in a blaze of tangled plots, visual bravura and comic-book savvy...
...credit much of this material to Williams instead of Screenwriter Mitch Markowitz. But he has created a smart and intricate context for the star. The station's staff constitutes a sort of awkward squad of the airwaves, commanded by Lieut. Hauk (Bruno Kirby, who lifts nerdiness to a new comic plain), but anchored in patient decency by Private First Class Garlick (Forest Whitaker, who lovably redefines the straight man's role...
...report. But soon there is terrorism in Saigon's streets, a terrorist in Adrian's life, even terror in his heart when a reportorial mission in the field goes awry. Both compassion and panic invade his routines. Director Barry Levinson (Diner, Tin Men) has always been good at wiring comic asides to a delay fuse, but this entire movie works on that principle. You may be out on the sidewalk before you realize that these are not just broadcasters. They represent the confused voices of all America registering shock as solid- seeming ground turns to quagmire...
...late '70s, can switch in nanoo-seconds from an infant's helium singsong to Elmer Fudd as Bwooce Spwingsteen. This glossolaliac gift can give the listener a high and a headache; it is that quick, sharp and scary. Scares Williams too. "When it works," says the Chicago-born comic, 36, "it's like . . . freedom! Suddenly these things are coming out of you. You're in control, but you're not. The characters are coming through you. Even I'm going, 'Whoa!' It's that Zen lock. It's channeling with Call Waiting...