Word: lifeless
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...bizarre collection of characters, truly worthy of O'Connor, whose novella magically integrates the commonplace and the violent. But without the superb cast assembled by Huston and Fitzgerald, Wise Blood might have been as lifeless as Haze's Church Without Christ. Instead, the cast brings to the screen and earnestness we expect only of top-rank stage actors. There are no holes, no weak links, only simple excellence...
...plunge low enough to impair the egg-producing ability of fish. Decomposition of organic matter slows, probably because of a loss of scavenging microorganisms. The number of plankton falls off sharply, depleting a vital link in the food chain. Finally, the water appears blue, clear-and virtually lifeless...
...fell on her camp, Joy Adamson indulged herself in her customary early evening habit: she set off, alone, on a stroll away from the camp. This time she did not return to hear the nightly news, as she always did. A search party was formed. Soon it found her lifeless body about 100 yards from the camp on a nearby trail. She had been badly mauled across the chest and an arm "by great claws," a friend reported, "no doubt a lion...
...schoolgirl "pear-shaped." When Duke finds out, he locks his son alone with him in the bedroom, strips him and beats him senseless with his razor strop (a prized possession incidentally, one of Duke's "glittering things"). When the punishment is sufficiently administered, his father Duke picks up his lifeless son, hugs him and whispers, "Be good. Try at least. Don't be like that." Later he fakes a suicide while his son watches. In the light of these episodes, Geoffrey Wolff's greatest achievement is not that he managed to write such a balanced account of his upbringing...
...Since the movie's generally good actors (among them Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Sigourney Weaver) all play equally bland technicians, it is hard to make an emotional investment in the alien's pecking order. Indeed, the film's characters are so lifeless that one begins to wonder whether they might not be parodies of space-age bureaucrats. If so, the satire is far too flat to be its own reward...