Word: moralizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Maybe Mike Leigh's High Hopes is too realistic and too intricate to be called a nursery rhyme for moderns. But he and his actors and designers do push out beyond the purely naturalistic. All the figures in his dismal urban landscape carry a carefully calculated moral weight, and their story is clearly intended as a microcosmic portrait of contemporary English life. So call it, perhaps, a fable on the sneak. And call it something else too: yet another carefully handmade ornament of the new British cinema, which includes such small recent marvels as My Beautiful Laundrette; Rita...
...20th century's hallmark nightmare images. The essence of the horror is that there is no explanation for it, no deeper meaning, no instructive or redemptive metaphor: the suffering just is. In the transmutation of Gregor Samsa, the world ceases to be predictable or rational; natural and moral order disappear. Critics have found in Kafka's vision hints of everything from the Holocaust to AIDS. But to burden the story with greater weight is in fact to lessen it. The thump in the gut comes from the literal details. The man who used to hurry to work now scuttles beneath...
...very thought of being able to read the entire genetic message, and perhaps alter it, is alarming to those who fear the knowledge could create many moral and ethical problems. Does genetic testing constitute an invasion of privacy, for example, and could it lead to more abortions and to discrimination against the "genetically unfit"? Should someone destined to be stricken with a deadly genetic disease be told about his fate, especially if no cure is yet available? Does it demean humans to have the very essence of their lives reduced to strings of letters in a computer data bank? Should...
Ingratiating social-climber Richard Rich (Robert de Neufville) has an altogether different approach to politics. Rich is not ashamed to beg for a post, and he serves as a direct contrast to More, who is living the epitome of the moral life. De Neufville plays the part of the brown-noser so naturally, in fact, that one shudders to think how he would act in section...
Clark gained national attention -- including a TIME cover -- by bullying students and faculty into a state of moral grace and academic excellence. His well-publicized symbols of rule were a bullhorn and a baseball bat. His lessons included expelling 300 of the worst troublemakers en masse, chaining the school's doors to bar drug dealers and -- whooping audience delight here -- inveighing colorfully against laziness, incompetence and any politician or community leader who questioned his ways. But underneath all that, as the movie points out, were sweetness and caring: Clark redeeming a crack addict (Jermaine Hopkins), mending a mother-daughter conflict...