Word: comic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...defending himself publicly, or infuriating for others who saw him as a creep who had gone too far. The spectacle of his life's woes on network news took away his carte blanche to detail them in 35mm film. By turning to a style whose emphasis is on the comic, rather than emphasizing something through the comic, Allen succeeds, at times, in making us forget about his life and simply laugh at his jokes...
...Lightly comic and pleasantly distracting as it is, however, "Bullets Over Broadway" cannot escape the mark of Allen's touch. If his philosophical bent is subdued, his style is not: Cusack bumbles about for much of the picture looking as if he is the slightly stilted son of Fielding Mellish. And, like "Manhattan Murder Mystery," "Bullets Over Broadway" ultimately can't help submitting to Allen's hopeful vision that love can work, that love should work. This vision, of course, must be Woody Allen's; it must be Woody Allen's plea...
Gloom never settled so quickly, before the foot lights as when Silver decides to preach issues. Pterodactyls does not descend emotional crests, it, plunges from them. In a Kathleen Turneresque growl, Grace bear down on Tommy with a triumphant speech, reaching the peak of her comic crescendo only to be interrupted by a gun discharging upstairs. Utter silence falls with the curtain as Todd intones. "Suddenly it became very cold." Manipulation reigns as Silver's king principle of craft...
...interest in the progression of their characters. Robert Levy gives the strongest characterization as the flamboyantly gay experimental actor, Sparger. At first, Sparger seems stereotypical, but as the play continues one sees that this is just a front for a truly painful and completely atypical past. Levy handles the comic and tragic aspects of his role with deftness and humor, carefully balancing the outrageous and the all-too-human aspects of Sparger's personality. Dana Gotlieb is subtly effective as Wanda, a substitute teacher for whom the assassination of JFK has become an obsessive symbol of lost innocence and missed...
...which should have been the climax of McCarthy's portrayal, gets lost in all the raving. Danielle Sherrod, as Carla, a flamboyant would-be sex goddess, is engaging and humorous at first. But her portrayal, too, is so intense as to lack dynamic, and her story, though flecked with comic moments, is ultimately predictable: good girl with high hopes burns out. Rona, portrayed by Kathy Twiss, is somewhat stereotypical: ex-hippie bemoans the moral void that supplanted the idealism of the Sixties. Rona reels off a year-by-year record of the protests of the Sixties, which is just boring...