Word: melodrama
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Alas, director Danny Cannon hasn't the skill to make majestic melodrama plausible. As for the facetiousness, Rob Schneider sweats arsenals of ammunition as Dredd's sarcastic sidekick. But the effect is redundant since Sly is his own comic relief. By now Stallone has become a symbol for all that is goofy and grandiloquent in Hollywood's live-action summer cartoons. The hormone that courses through his movie veins could be called preposterone...
...Apollo moon missions, from 1967 to 1972, provided cubic tons of melodrama, from the explosion of the Apollo 1 test module that killed three astronauts to Neil Armstrong's buoyant lunar stroll from Apollo 11. The apogee of American know-how and teamwork, the program could, at the flick of a wrong switch, careen from triumph to tragedy. In this job, success meant you forged the ultimate frontier; failure meant you died with the whole world watching...
...Algerian war stumbles blindly to a close, its fatal chaos is felt back home, where tragedy mixes with the melodrama that informs a teenager's every waking moment. Brains, groins, hearts-all work overtime in Francois, MiIte and their friends; they face their glandular convulsions with a wonderful seriousness. Swathing them in the sunlight and streams of Provence, Tachina treats all the kids (and their teachers) with affection and respect. He knows that for these handsome idealists, love is as important as sex. They are defining their blossoming identities by discovering the people they can't live without...
...violent films are as ugly and transparent as some of the so-called gangsta rappers he wants to huff and puff and blow away. Like those of the worst rappers, Dole's views sound tinny and half-desperate. Like the lamest films, Dole goes for the spectacular (guns, violence, melodrama) rather than the substantive (love, sex, race, class). The main thing Dole, weak rappers and weak movies share is an ultimate goal: money. Staten Island hip-hoppers Wu-Tang Clan said it best with their 1994 hit single, C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around...
DIED. MARIA LUISA BEMBERG, 73, Latin America's foremost female film director; of stomach cancer; in Buenos Aires. Bemberg came to cinema relatively late in life, directing her first film at the age of 59. Typical of her feminist oeuvre was the Oscar-nominated Camila (1984), a melodrama of an aristocratic young woman who seeks romantic happiness with a Catholic priest...