Word: contrivedness
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Four hours after the funeral of Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev last November, an incident that would have seemed improbable in the most contrived spy thriller unfolded in the Green Room of the Kremlin. As leader of the American delegation attending the Brezhnev burial, Vice President George Bush had been invited...
The same might be said of Wouk. His plot is sometimes cumbersome and contrived. The wedding of Natalie's Polish relatives, for ex ample, looks as if it had been borrowed from Fiddler on the Roof, and the timing, the night before the German invasion, is ludicrous. His dialogue...
THE CAMERA STALKS Scheider as he makes his way through the artifacts of the auction house--as if does throughout most of the film. But unlike in more conventional thrillers, this technique is not intended to identify the camera's eye with the murderer's. It represents instead Rice's...
TOO OFTEN, the images degenerate into ponderous tokens of dejection and resignation. The three sisters are repeatedly grouped in an artificial constellation reminiscent of a portrait photographer's studio. In general, the blocking is overly contrived, too good to be true. Everyone moves mechanically, absolutely without spontaneity, and in dialogue...
Given that Sylvester Stallone has always acted more expressively with his muscles than with his mouth, one has to admire the near wordless dispatch with which those who contrived First Blood set him to maiming and killing a multitude of people in a multitude of imaginative ways. That they manage...