Word: grosbard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Directed by Ulu Grosbard...
...Niro's performance consists mostly of doleful looks, Streep's of brushing back her hair and giving two vigorous nods whenever she tells a lie, and that says it all about Ulu Grosbard's lugubrious direction. The name of the picture being knocked off here is Brief Encounter, not Closely Watched Trains, but of course, what we are dealing with here is not moviemaking but star packaging. Next time they should remember the gift wrap...
...plays have a sense of place and character," says Ulu Grosbard, director of Jamey Foster, "a unity of vision and a sharp eye for the contradictions within human beings." Jon Jory, whose Actors Theater of Louisville first produced Crimes of the Heart, is pleased that "Beth writes people rather than plots. She's writing what she knows. She imbibed the Southern gothic sensibility with her mother's milk." Evelyn Purcell, who will direct The Moon Watcher, is a kindred spirit; her documentary film Rush, about student bodies at Ole Miss, is a cartographer's view of Henleyland...
This masterful manipulation of the way a scene looks is what True Confessions so obviously lacks for the rest of the picture. Ulu Grosbard's bland and uninteresting direction more often looks like a television situation comedy than a major feature film. Not only are the colors and backgrounds either washed-out or meaningless, but their lifelessness saps the movie of any feeling for the location or the era. Besides the old cars and wide-lapelled suits there is little hint of where or when the movie is taking place...
TRUE CONFESSIONS Directed by Ulu Grosbard Screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne...