Word: melodrama
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Both young actresses achieve an unforced naturalism in their work, and so does Anders, whose first major feature this is. A single mother (and once a welfare client), she is less interested in making melodrama -- or ideological points -- out of these lives than she is in showing how testy affection and a $ talent for emotional improvisation can sustain "family values" in no-budget circumstances. Anders' film is a compassionate meditation on the desperate lengths to which poverty-ridden decency must go to preserve itself. As such, it makes ruminations on this subject by the likes of Dan Quayle look supremely...
...locate her angry strength and the sick thing who has been trying to duplicate herself in other women's images ever since her twin sister died. Director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune) sweats too, swathing the mayhem in dusky tones, shifting moods easily from working-girl realism to nightmare melodrama. Yet the piece moves so deliberately that the viewer is able to anticipate the next atrocity, rather than getting thrilled...
...earned many critics' indulgences. It does have some B-movie virtues: director Carl Franklin gives the actors space to breathe the rancid air of paperback tough- guy tragedy; and Williams, with her lovely insolence, looks like star quality from here. But to pin four-star raves on this modest melodrama is to mistake a 7-Eleven candy snatcher for a master thriller killer...
...production also indulges in a little corny melodrama that dull Loot's sharp tone. "Loot is a serious play," Orton wrote of his farce . He insisted that his outrageous lines be delivered with absolute seriousness; only this could make them truly humorous commentaries on a hypocritical society...
Zentropa gives signs that the answer is yes. This existential melodrama was originally known as Europa, and Danish director Lars von Trier's ambition is that vast: Continent-wide. Set on a German train rumbling through the rubble of World War II -- but suggesting the recent chaos of post-communist Europe -- Zentropa plays like a hallucinogenic remake of The Third Man. A naive American, Leo (Jean-Marc Barr), walks into a web of political duplicity spun by a desperate provocateuse (Barbara Sukowa), a cynical Allied officer (Eddie Constantine) and lots of supporting sharks and werewolves. And where is Harry Lime...