Word: plain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...theory ignores nitty-gritty realities. Regardless of the relative strength of African-American and Jewish communities in New York City, the African Americans who beat Jews in Crown Heights for racially motivated reasons were, at that moment, sufficiently powerful to subordinate their victims. This theory, moreover, wrongly ignores the plain fact that African Americans -- as judges, teachers, mayors, police officers, members of Congress and army officers -- increasingly occupy positions of power and influence from which they could, if so minded, tremendously damage clients, co-workers, dependents and, beyond, the society as a whole...
...acting in the "Getaway" is not merely mediocre--it's just plain bad. This is probably because the script is so overwrought with cliches that the criminals are laughable. Benyon's badguy persona is so unconvincing that every once in a while I expected Benyon to fall out of character, turn to the audience and say "Just kidding." But this is not "Wayne's World"--the "Getaway's is not pretending to be stupid--so that never actually happens. Instead, Benyon's body just gets chucked in a well by his bodyguards, after they find him quite dead...
...over everything has loomed the sorry spectacle of Tonya and Nancy. Their contretemps is not only a living metaphor for tarnished ideals of sport but also a depressing reminder that a litigation-mad and bureaucracy-laden society has if anything diminished its means of extracting plain truth in timely fashion. Whatever the ultimate twist of their tortuous saga, it seems certain that the contest they both sought so ardently to win will unfold without decisive evidence of Harding's innocence or guilt. The satisfying simplicity of sport, with its winners and losers and tangible numbers and seemingly objective results...
...good ear for the sound of her contemporaries but also knows how to shape it into dialogue that is pointed and full of unforced observations. Director Ben Stiller keeps things crisp, no small matter in a movie that features a fair amount of aimless activity and just plain lying around. The latter takes place in the "maxipad" Lelaina shares with Vickie (Janeane Garofalo), who sometimes imagines her own funeral as a scene from Melrose Place ("chokers and halter tops"), Sammy (Steve Zahn), who is gently receding into the wallpaper, and Troy (Ethan Hawke), who is a philosopher-couch potato, fired...
...backbeat to match). "Why Am I So Tired All the Time?" and "Evanston, IL" are quiet, slowly oscillating incarnations of post-teenage despair, as if a male lounge-jazz singer were suddenly infused with the authentic spirit of the late Joy Division. "Conchita," which I think is a plain old love song (though it's real hard to tell), does all the work of a classic Tin Pan Alley composition on only two chords at a time, shifting back and forth between 'em in a way that Versus, if you've heard of Versus, very much wish they could. "Salsa...