Word: mopped
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Christmas films come in two basic shapes: books and toys. The toys -- doll babies like Home Alone and cuddly creatures like Edward Scissorhands -- may mop up at the box office. But prestige is a Hollywood product too; it can be cashed in for Oscars if enough critics and Motion Picture Academy voters are impressed by what they see. So lauded literary properties like Hamlet and The Sheltering Sky become ambitious films. Herewith, three bookish films hoping for a shelf life that extends past New Year...
Count on Awakenings, written by Steve Zaillian, to mop up at Oscar- $ nominations time. Any movie about mental disturbance (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rain Man) is likely to touch Academy members, not so much because it treats a serious issue as because it parades the performer's craft. To watch De Niro shrink into the shadow of catatonia is to be made aware of his great gifts of body control, of withdrawing into character, of seeming to be. It's an awesome show that reveals more about De Niro than about the man he is playing. Like...
...looks like your average sitcom teenager -- gangling, shy, his boyish face framed by a mop of dark curly hair. Until he sits down at the piano. Then, all of a sudden, Evgeni Kissin, who just turned 19, grows up. Big, powerful hands crash down on the keyboard with the assurance of a performer three times his age. His tone is full-blooded yet lyrical, a mature sound that most fine pianists need years to achieve. Only his interpretations betray his youth, but that is precisely what is right about them. Dashing, impetuous and seemingly spontaneous, Kissin's playing...
Ringwald alone does not not impress. She has yet to go beyond the formula she found in the beginning of her career. She whines, she pouts, she looks tremulous and annoys. She--again--wears wacky clothes. The only thing that has changed is the color of her famous mop--it has gotten progressively more orange and progressively less flattering. Ringwald would be better off spending less time at the hairdresser and more time enrolled in a decent acting class...
...emblematic passage would provide the unambiguous evidence of awfulness. Alther's opening three words ("An ivory BMW") and her initial description of her middle-aged, open-married Manhattan heroine ("Clea Shawn was a sophisticated woman . . . she'd been in love so often that her heart felt like a sponge mop") are certainly warning signs. So is Alther's early summary of the passions that bind two women "Elke felt like a pile of nails being pulled to pieces by a magnet residing inside Clea." But such maladroit introductory passages could be dismissed as the ironic setup for a comic romp...