Word: dourness
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...times, when Henrik's dour spirit takes control of the narrative, Intentions threatens to become a mope opera. The film also lacks the intensity that the Swedish master lent his own projects; this is Bergman without Bergman. But it is also Bergman plus August. Like Fanny and Alexander, this film is both worshipful and critical of its heroes. Like Pelle, it sprawls on a canvas of long-ago wealth and want, love and anxiety...
...separation became routine. In Charles' defense it could be said that the role of king-in-waiting to a robustly healthy mother while acting simultaneously as consort to a superstar formed the basis of a dour midlife crisis. The new book makes much of the prince's relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, 43, the wife of a brigadier who is himself a courtier, with the title of Silver Stick in Waiting to the Queen. Camilla is one of Charles' old flames, dating from his lengthy bachelor days, when he courted classy girls enthusiastically but did not propose...
...Heros from Belgium and Delicatessen from France, Zentropa finds movie energy in spiritual malaise. These films take their cue from the dystopic visions of Blade Runner and Brazil -- pictures set in the future but cluttered with decor from the film noir past. The imagery possesses a kind of dour voluptuousness: bleak and busy. Their crammed, skewed compositions excite the eye. These movies won't push Lethal 3 off the multiplex screen; they can't compete with Hollywood product. And that is the happy point. They are appealingly strange -- different from the American behemoths but, unlike most examples of European cine...
...physical splendor of Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern can seem at best anachronistic, at worst reactionary. Even the film's nomination for this year's foreign-language Academy Award might attest to the bland gentility of its virtues, if only because Red Lantern reprises the dour theme and visual extravagance of 1988's big winner, The Last Emperor. But this obscures the point of a brave, passionate and highly entertaining work of art. In the best movies, style reflects substance. And in this story of a wealthy man in 1920s China and the four women he keeps...
...fated titular hero, Mick Jagger, the rock singer, with a beard that makes him appear more Amish than Australian, is, sadly, simply a dour renegade who rarely becomes the 'wild colonial boy' of the legend...