Word: moralizes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kubrick returns to the movie mainstream, he also waters down his material with a Hollywood ending. So far, he has closely followed his source novel, Gustav Hasford's taut, scary The Short-Timers. Now -- we will say no more -- Kubrick pretties up the climax with a bogus moral dilemma and some attenuated anguish. A viewer is finally left to savor earlier delights: the dialogue's wild, desperate wit; the daring in choosing a desultory skirmish to make a point about war's pointlessness; the fine, large performances of almost every actor (Ermey and D'Onofrio seem sure shots for Oscar...
...Biden, gambling that he could pump up the crowd even higher while challenging his middle-class neighbors with the specter of a "nation at risk" from materialist values, declining industries, drug abuse, inadequate schools and kids abandoned to poverty. "It is the plight of our children that is the moral test of our time," he roared in a voice that bounced off the surrounding buildings...
...root of the problem with American behavior ((ETHICS, May 25)) is a disdain for moral absolutes. The seeds of relativism were planted in the 19th and 20th centuries by thinkers like Einstein, Darwin and Freud and nourished in the '60s with the breakdown of the Judeo-Christian moral consensus. The harvest of this situation is the self-indulgence without accountability that we see today in Reagan's America...
Perhaps the most glaring flaw in your story is the reference to former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan's trial as evidence of moral decay in high places. The result of the Donovan trial, wherein he was acquitted, only underscores your total lack of sensitivity. You treated him as if he were guilty while the jury was deliberating on that very issue...
...smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward, but no because it's wrong, because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human beings, trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions...