Word: guileless
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Movies have trod this turf once or twice before; the mid-'50s were rife with such sprawling family sagas (Giant, Written on the Wind). And it might seem as if such broad emotions, such guileless ironies, have no place in our blandly cynical age. But Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) strides easily among movie cliches. His gift is to play them as if they're all new and all true. And this time he has a cast to lend them flesh and nuance. Quaid creates a genuine pathetic hero, first exuding charm, then marketing it. And Hutton...
...master of explosive, almost inexplicable starts, he had already propelled his body down the 100-meter track faster than anyone before. Now his legs had ceased churning, he had relinquished the flag of his adopted Canada, which he had waved around the stadium, and the applause for the seemingly guileless sprinter who had dethroned the all-too-sleek Carl Lewis had died. Only a urine sample stood between Ben Johnson and a nightlong celebration for the happiest day of his 26 years...
...lead the rest of us astray. Despite his heroic abilities, he is not vain. He is not greedy. He is not an operator, a manipulator, not an inside trader. He does not lust after power. And not only is he good, he is also innocent, in a kind and guileless way that Americans have sometimes been but more often have only imagined themselves...
SHEILA McCarthy's performance as the shy Polly is truly extraordinary. Her waif-like face and huge eyes are guileless. Her innocence is believable and her naivete is charming. And thus she is utterly at odds with the chic gallery people who treat her like a lost puppy--lovable and amusing but not worth their attention. When Polly hears them say a painter has "acute awareness," she thinks they mean "a cute awareness, like a cute face...
Such jokes -- delivered, as all her slings are, with a great guileless smile -- fulfill the tradition of the defiant female wit, alive with innuendo, that stretches from the Wife of Bath to Belle Barth. They also tend to obscure Midler's unique talent. Yes, she coos bedroom ballads like Long John Blues; sure, her charts tease five decades of popular music with the wink of parody. But her laser-precise technique is no counterfeit of feeling. It is the art of the Method singer, who approaches a song as an actor does his text: finding the heft of a melodic...