Word: nicholsons
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Although adapted from the well-received play by William Nicholson, who also wrote the screenplay, "Shadowlands" is not especially profound. Lines meant to awe and move us sound a little hackneyed, as if Nicholson had skimmed through the "religion" entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations instead of bothering to read a page or two of Lewis' work. It is essentially a sentimental vehicle for the very solid acting by both Hopkins and Winger...
...against; an older woman is often seen as irrelevant. Actresses have complained for years that their male counterparts don't run into the same career roadblocks they do once they reach 40, but the dilemma is more serious than whether Meryl Streep is in as much demand as Jack Nicholson. Lauren Hutton and stories about older women and younger men notwithstanding, the woman who can no longer give birth may sometimes feel as used up in modern America as she was in preindustrial times, when bearing children was a key to economic survival...
Shadowlands is, in essence, a true story, though screenwriter William Nicholson, adapting his own play, admits that given Lewis' reticence, he has had to imagine much of what went on in the relationship with Gresham. And reticent is the word for Richard Attenborough's film version. But that's a virtue, not a defect, when your setting is English academia (no one has more persuasively captured its manners) and your subject is mortality. There is something very moving in the understated way that these people confront it, something very sweetly believable in their courtship and in the brief bliss they...
...maybe Meryl Streep for Francesca, though the female lead doesn't really matter that much, since most of the powerful sighing in the story is done by Kincaid. But who will play Rationality, Kincaid's conscience? One vote here for Jack Nicholson, who wouldn't have any trouble with the pivotal scene in which "Rationality shrieked at him, 'Let it go, Kincaid, get back on the road. Shoot the bridges, go to India. Stop in Bangkok on the way and look up the silk merchant's daughter who knows every ecstatic secret the old ways can teach. Swim naked with...
...only saving grace (although not enough to carry the movie) is Slater's acting. Of course, he acts like his typical Jack Nicholson-esque self, but his evangelical speeches to his peers and his sincerity and sagacity keep the movie from becoming a complete self-parody. Slater delivers his lines with the mixture of childlike sincerity and budding adult wisdom that is required of this most intelligent teen. Mathis, on the other hand, acts like a cross between Molly Ringwald and Wynona Ryder (believe me, two wrongs never make a right). Her precocious writing ability, combined with her overzealous real...