Word: melodrama
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Here is a rarity: a muckraking movie that was not made for TV. The subject of this Canadian melodrama is a religious cult like the Moonies, and Director R.L. Thomas' tone is about as judicious as Friz Freleng's. David (Nick Mancuso), depressed over a short-circuited affair, falls in with some "Heavenly Children" who presoak his brain with homilies and then scrub it clean of all hope, feeling, self. Although it has plenty of impact, Ticket is often too busy being outraged to bother with niceties of characterization and plot. (Just how does David become converted...
Lilienthal's portrait of the city of Leon in the final days of the revolution--reenacted with the eager aid of dozens of actual participants--has its share of melodrama, certainly. And the drama is poorly developed, really just one episode after another. But the director drives home one crucial point: short of wholesale slaughter, there seems no way of stopping a popular revolution in a small country. The few National Guardsmen who must "control" Leon, in reality control only the garrison in the center of the city, and the radius of automatic fire around their heavily armed vehicles. Sooner...
Truffaut has always been fascinated by the destructive potential of obsessed love. He handles it here with a detachment that never becomes dispassion, a generous and evenhanded sympathy for both its victims that is not allowed to slip into melodrama, satire or even irony. This time, in fact, he provides a surrogate for himself in the person of an older woman, Mme. Jouve (Véronique Silver), the manager of the tennis club where much of the action takes place. She is gray, like the subdued light of the film itself. She is quotidian in her concerns, as Truffaut...
Nettles, 37, who knocked in three runs each game and was named Most Valuable Player in the playoffs, thoroughly upstaged any possible Billy-Reggie-George melodrama. Graig is not much for the sort of public theater these three seemed to enjoy when all were together in New York City. Nevertheless, Nettles found himself center stage at the team's victory party in Oakland. Angry that several guests of Jackson's had been rude to his family, Nettles confronted his teammate, and the two got into a spirited shoving match. "It's nothing new for this team," Nettles...
...commit herself to anyone, let alone this infant. Finally, after a conference with Bergen, the sole time we see Bergen at all supportive, Bisset decides to accept. She goes to meet him. There is some hint that her boyfriend Hart Bochner has involved himself with Bergen's daughter (the melodrama again), but the film never clarifies this point. It actually matters little. More importantly, he makes some remark about marriage, and she responds with, "Is that what you think marriage is?" He doesn't answer this question; he can't. In Hollywood romantic comedies, the couple traditionally uses conversation...