Word: contorts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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THIS PLOT PROVIDES the framework for the usual action--Popeye slugging his way through run-ins with Bluto and other assorted ruffians. The fight scenes underscore the limitations of the premise. Clever camera and stunt work not-withstanding, human beings simply cannot contort themselves the way cartoon figures can. Robin Williams can only cock his wrist a couple of times for the famous twister punch. As a result, the slapstick gains in immediacy but loses the necessary hyperbole...
...Wise Blood belongs to Huston and his star, Brad Dourif as Haze. Dourif was the stuttering Billy Bibbitt of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; he looks like a crazed Don Knotts. His eyes contort wildly, glaring unnervingly, distracting from his rigid nose and hard, flat mouth. Dourif's Haze is grotesque, a little man possessed by a shady demon. He believes in his Church Without Christ not with his soul--which is undeniably Christian--but with his body. It shakes with evangelical passion, with barely controlled violent passion capable of murder. And in an ultimate renouncement of Jesus...