Word: larner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Directed by MICHAEL RITCHIE Screenplay by JEREMY LARNER...
...Candidate might have been a cool and cynical analysis of the contemporary political process. Scenarist Larner was a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. He knows all the intricacies of political infighting, and the movie deals with such matters competently enough. But Larner never makes McKay believable as a man. All we know about him is that he has something of a communication problem with his father...
Ritchie and Larner stack the cards by making all McKay supporters well-fed suburban liberals or eager youths with a renewed faith in the electoral process. Jarmon's people are loud, right-wing, wrong-thinking rednecks who are not even photogenic. Neither the authentic political atmosphere nor canny performances by Redford, Boyle and Porter go far to cut through the basic glibness of the film. Ritchie incorporates numerous television political commercials and makes a point of their smooth dishonesty and wily distortion. None, however have less substance than The Candidate...
...strident as the radical, William Tepper adenoidal in the role of the basketball player. Karen Black, playing the faculty wife, offers only a dreary variation on her basic Five Easy Pieces performance. It should be pointed out that the title of Nicholson's movie, and the Jeremy Larner novel before it, is derived from a fine short poem by Robert Creeley, which ends "drive, he sd, for/ christ's sake, look/ out where yr going." It is a pointed, challenging caution that Nicholson badly needs to heed...
Boston College's Director of Public Relations, John Larner, acknowledged that 85 per cent of the students participated in the strike, but he declined to conjecture on the University's response to the student's demands...