Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wants to be Batman. Its hero, a scientist (Liam Neeson) scarred in body and soul after being left for dead by venal thugs, is a cloaked crusader bent more on vengeance than on justice. Director Sam Raimi, whose cheapo slasher film The Evil Dead achieved cult status, mines familiar comic-book terrain with a plucky heroine (Frances McDormand), a couple of corporate villains -- one slick (Colin Friels), the other slimy (Larry Drake) -- and plenty of explosive violence that virtually reads KA-BOOM! in block letters across the screen...
...like Batman, this comic-book movie is anything but comic; every plangent chord of Danny Elfman's splendid pop-Wagnerian score underlines the scientist's twisted nobility. Raimi isn't effective with his actors, and the dialogue lacks smart menace, but his canny visual sense carries many a scene. And he knows how to give resonance to a tinny plot: by portraying a character so powerful and warped that he is urban America's perfect patron saint...
BLACK AND BLUE. Tony winner Ruth Brown seemed irreplaceable as the comic heft of this gorgeous Broadway review, but LaVern Baker (also heard on the Dick Tracy score) gets the same laughs and is, if anything, torchier. In other regards this celebration of blues song and tap dance is better than ever: the all-black cast has infused a newfound Harlem funk into the Busby Berkeleyesque glamour...
DARKMAN. Director Sam Raimi mines comic-book terrain with a plucky heroine, a couple of corporate villains and plenty of explosive violence that virtually reads KA-BOOM! in block letters across the screen...
...MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Many a summer theater tries Shakespeare's comic delight, but perhaps only the Open Door Theater, a troupe that moves from town to town trying to reacquaint the heartland with the live stage, has set it in a coal mine -- Pioneer Tunnel in Ashland, Pa., this week only...