Word: leadenly
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SAVAGES is a doughnut--there's plenty around the edges but not too much in the middle. Sometimes flimsy plots demand a suspension of belief too great for the audience to bear; in this case the leaden weight of an overdrawn script buries the dedicated acting jobs that try to save the show. Christopher Hampton's Savages, unfortunately, is more fundamentally flawed, for it founders when its focus--a Brazilian Indian tribe on the verge of extinction--obscures or perhaps just misses entirely all the other elements in this would-be "major statement." Socialism, repression, guilt and the excesses...
Poor Tatum is not totally responsible for the failings of International Velvet. A belated sequel to National Velvet (1944), the movie has a leaden gait that no actress could quicken. The blame belongs to Writer-Director Bryan Forbes, who seems to be unduly embarrassed about making a horse-race picture. Rather than tell his hokey story in a crisp manner, he has gussied up the action with dreary psychological motifs and pseudoliterary writing. International Velvet should have had the exhilarating spirit of the recent quarter-horse-race film, Casey's Shadow-or at least the plodding charm of National...
Winterset presents a formidable challenge for any company because it is so unwieldy. The Loeb's ensemble though blessed with excellent technical work and some fine actors, does not quite manage to overcome the sheer leaden ness of this three-hour-plus, heavy drama. They give it a good try, only to fold up, as does much of the audience, by the time the third act rolls around...
...power of this song is offset by two awful turkeys, "Adam Raised a Cain" and "Streets of Fire." Almost identical, they throb like a migraine with leaden, new-wave-inspired beats while Springsteen growls incoherently and lays down overamplified guitar riffs. These songs seem to be his answer to the anger of punk rock, but they sound more like annoying filler material...
Author John H. Davis has discovered in the Guggenheims his own rich vein of biography; his book fails only in the leaden prose. But Davis' unerring eye for anecdotes surmounts most stylistic obstacles and makes The Guggenheims a consistently fascinating saga...