Word: melodrama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spying. In Berlin. During World War II. Maybe she is a bit too spunky for her own good. But not for the good of SHINING THROUGH. She's a terrific character, and it's a terrific idea to project her anachronistically back into the kind of improbable melodrama that made home-front life during the war so entertaining. Indeed, Linda borrows some of her best espionage tricks from the Hollywood thrillers to which she's addicted. At a certain point, writer- director David Seltzer, finding himself with too many obligations to an overcomplicated plot, forgets to keep up Linda...
...Black, the writer-director of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! tosses his usual salad of mad love, acrobatic sex and cross-dressing, and garnishes it with a chorus line in a women's prison. High Heels careers like a runaway circus train over the rickety trestle of melodrama. Between giggles at the absurdity of it all, you're welcome to shudder...
Unfortunately, Seltzer proceeds to destroy the credibility he has so carefully worked to establish. Sappy lines seem allowable--they are reminders of the melodrama of old war films, which were replete with sentimentality. However, a drastic shoot-'em-up scene and a ridiculously inappropriate ending just don't fit. They are inexplicable and unacceptable...
Shining Through is a solid attempt to recapture the nostalgia of the war years in a romantic melodrama full of adventure and intrigue. But in the ending, the valiant effort fails...
...shaggy story the older woman relates. It is about the friendship of headstrong Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and ladylike Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), two young women of the 1930s, and it involves home cooking, wife beating and a murder. It is an uneasy blend of (among other things) whimsy, melodrama, the Ku Klux Klan and feminist sentiment that coexists rather awkwardly with the modern story. Like most movies that wish mainly to warm our hearts, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES is basically a lie. But it works. In part that's because all the actresses ground their archetypal characters in strongly realized...