Word: genially
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...predictable--especially if you're a fan of that most basic of English comic genres, in which simple, provincial folk foil the bumbling law in order to preserve a traditional way of life. Grace is not as tightly wound as the best of its breed, but it is a genial way to pass the time...
...intrigue and fabulous silk frocks. So here's a switch: a modern comedy that trumpets its breeziness from its first shots, of a man stepping into a newfangled street stall that gives his body a sort of car wash. The rest, set in a failing Beijing bathhouse, is a genial study of family collision and reconciliation: the yuppie (Pu Cunxin) with his aged dad and slow-witted brother (Jiang Wu). The film is almost too ingratiating (How many times will you hear a fat Chinese guy sing O sole mio? One too many), but it has a nice mourning tone...
...grizzled boat captain in To Have and Have Not; then he's greedy Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, risking his mates' lives to make the big score; finally, he nears the daft steeliness of The Caine Mutiny's Captain Queeg. Clooney bends his genial machismo to these darker shadings. But the movie needs him only to be a hero, an action figure with a genial scowl, expectorating cliches like "So this is the moment of truth. This is where we separate the men from the boys." He really says that...
...total disaster either. Jackson is as fast with a contemptuous quip as he is with his fists; and if he is not quite the cool sexual outlaw that his predecessor was, that's all right too, since "blaxploitation" was never more than a passing fad--a more or less genial way of asserting black studdishness while giving white liberals the jimjams...
...anachronistic manners of a surfer dude--a little too politely countercultural for his line of work and not half as clever as he thinks he is. He looks like a young Robert Redford (the movie makes a nice satirical reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), but his genial self-regard--assailed by amusing self-doubt when he actually gets into a classic gunfight--is all his own. He's a terrific sidekick to Chan's funny, earnest, often victimized righteousness. This kid could be a star...